#bthb Daniel Michaelson's story

[ashintheairlikesnow]

BTHB: Tearful Smile

You anons wanted the dubcon drabble? I give you de dubcon drabble. CW: Dubcon (on both sides). Also contains drugging, mentions of torture, violence, and abuse, as well as threatened noncon (not depicted). And more than a fair dash of spice.

@spiffythespook​ asked for tearful smile for @badthingshappenbingo​

Blood spot: requested Puppy sticker: fulfilled​

This isn’t really my “Merry Christmas” piece - that’s going up next week. But it takes place just before the first Christmas (Handcuffs Year) Danny is in captivity, after just about a full year with Bram in the woods in Alberta. 

Tagging: @bleeding-demon-teeth, @spiffythespook, @finder-of-rings, @whumpywhumper, @special-spicy-chicken​

“Wh-what did you give him?”

“Does it matter?” Bram sits back on the couch, one arm up, sipping his beer, with the air of a man watching a really fascinating show on TV. “Look at him, Nate. Doesn’t he shine?”

Danny lay on his back with part of his head underneath the Christmas tree, blue eyes sparkling and hazy, running fingers along the lines of red and blue and green lights, whispering “pretty, pretty, pretty” to himself in a tone of hushed awe and wonder.

God, he’s beautiful. Even with the bruises.

Nate swallows back revulsion at the thought, the self-loathing that had become a second skin he wears over the first. The only protection he had left - hating himself for things he hasn’t even done yet, with the understanding that sooner or later, he will.

He can’t hold out forever, and it’s a miracle Bram has even gone this long without forcing him to take a more active role, to do more than clean up the blood, bandage wounds, maybe hold one knife while Bram uses another.

But he can’t argue with Bram’s question, standing next to the couch and looking across the room… because Danny did shine.

He’s high as a fucking kite, and he glows with it, all the daily miseries smoothed out and away by whatever was in his system. His jaw is a little slack, and the wavy red hair is spread out behind and beneath him against the Christmas tree skirt, a perfect circle of dark hunter green that sets off Danny’s pale skin, even in the yellowed light from the lamps and the crackling fireplace. 

It etches the pale, thin scars on his face - he’s worn the muzzle three times in one year - into shadows, like a line drawing rather than a man.

Danny doesn’t even seem to notice him yet. He’s lost in the curved oval of the lights, twisting the cord that connected them, the wires a bright green mockery of the colors of the pine needles themselves, wrapped around fingers that were beginning to roughen from cleaning. Danny's hands were losing the way they’d once seemed so oddly sensitive for someone who lived as hard as Danny did.

“Bram, is h-he going to be… oh-okay, in the morning?” Nate had never really done drugs besides pot, it had never been his thing. He’s pretty sure he’s the only person he knows his own age who hasn’t tried something harder.

When he’d first gotten to know Danny, he’d been the only one still worrying about whether or not the skinny redhead, who towered over the rest of the group, would make it home safe after one unwise decision or another.

“What, cause you wanna bring him home with you?” Scott laughed, and the others laughed, too, standing at the bar with beers in hand watching Danny Michaelson throw himself around in a mosh pit down by the stage. It didn’t matter that the bar was dark and the band was loud and there was a crowd down there - you could always see Danny’s hair, his height, above the rest.

Nate watched him push at another man, who shoved back and sent Danny reeling, a fierce smile like a snarl on his face, before he spun and shoved at someone else entirely. You could nearly see the sweat droplets flung from his hair, the way he shone. Danny was angry - and elated - in the dark.

Nate wondered, with a sudden rush of blood in his heart and head and other places entirely, what he looked like with that much sweat on him and much less clothing.

He hadn’t been with anyone since he’d gotten away from Bram, but he thought maybe he was ready to try.

“Wh-what? No! I just… you kn-know, it seems like he d-d-does a lot of drugs,” Nate said, shrugging, trying not to look too concerned, too worried, too interested. He tried taking a very calculated drink of his beer, and spilled some less than gracefully onto his shirt, but it was dark enough that the other men didn’t notice.

“Oh, yeah, he totally does.” That was Will, who just shook his head full of curly dark hair, chugged the rest of his beer, smacked the empty bottle down on the bar, and ordered another - all in one graceful motion.

The bartender was not as impressed as Will wanted him to be.

Nate frowned, glancing back at the mosh pit. A woman nearly a foot shorter than Danny had been pushed down, and Danny leaned over her, blocking the crowd from getting near her while he threw an arm out to help her back up

God, Nate thought, not for the first time, and not for the last. He’s beautiful. “Has anyone tried to st-stop him? From getting high all the time?”

“Stop Danny?” Scott rolled his eyes. “Fuck no. Look, he’s a grown-ass man, he’ll make his own dumbass choices. He’s a cool guy, but he’s a fucking roller coaster. Just… hang on and enjoy the ride, Nate.”

“I’m n-not… that’s not wh-what I m-m-m-”

“Settle down, numbnuts, I’m kidding. Anyway, keep it casual with Danny or don’t keep it at all.”

“Wh-why?”

“He’s angry as fuck, man. Probably going to burn out by his mid-twenties on that bitter shit.”

“And the drugs, Will.”

“Right. Scott’s right - can’t discount the drugs. But, you know what - fuck it, don’t we all burn out by thirty now?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, and laughed again. “Danny just gets to burn out with all that mysterious money. We should all be so lucky.”

Nate stands next to the little plastic mat with the thin blankets that left Danny shivering and sometimes so desperately cold he was willing to get in bed with Bram just to have a hint of warmth, and wonders what Scott and Will and the rest of them would think about how lucky Danny is now.

Is his ankle chain lucky? Are the open sores on his wrists from the handcuffs lucky? Is he lucky to have Bram slice into the backs of his hands, over and over again? Should he count himself lucky to be alive, or would Danny have been luckier if he were dead by now?

“He’s fine,” Bram says, waving his free hand carelessly, bringing Nate back from his thoughts. The pale blue eyes - a little cloudy-looking, and with those darker pieces of himself that constantly move under the surface - are locked on Danny, too. “He knew I put shit in his drink the second I gave it to him and he didn’t fight me on it… so maybe there’s something you didn’t know about our little Red, huh?”

“N-no, I saw h-him do stuff, at bars…” Nate hesitates, torn between twin urges to walk away and to stay here to stare at the absolute gorgeousness that was Danny’s face lit from the inside out. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Danny had been bitter and angry - and sort of fascinating for the way he so easily accessed the fury that Nate no longer could - but on drugs he was softer. Nate had sworn, back when he was hiding out and hoping Bram would give up looking for him one day, that he could see that the bitter part of Danny was a shell he wore over the real man underneath.

“You want him?” Bram asks, casually. Like offering to let Nate borrow a book.

“I’m s-s-sorry, do I what?”

Of course I fucking want him, but not like this.

“You’ve said no every other time I’ve tried to get you to take him. I only brought him here because of you, anyway... What about this time? Maybe because he won’t remember it this time? Should make it easier on you, right?”

Yes, because the problem is whether or not he remembers it, not that I did it. That makes perfect fucking sense.

Bram glances back at him, and their eyes briefly meet, and Nate sinks under the water, for just a second, before Bram looks away.

You goddamn monster. I love you.

“I don’t th-think Ecstasy m-m-makes you forget anything,” Nate says, hesitantly, his low voice soft enough to cover the hardness of his thoughts. His stomach twists again. There’s nothing he’d rather do less than victimize Danny yet again, in a whole new way, in an even worse way than the bleeding and the pain.

Danny seems finally to notice him, twisting around on the floor to look over, shooting Nate a loopy, addled, beautiful bright smile. His ankle chain rattles as he moves, the cuff too tightly to even shift around. “Pretty lights,” He breathes. “Nate, come lay down in the lights with me. C’mon. I want you to see the lights this way.”

“Go ahead,” Bram says, grinning. It’s a shark’s smile, full of sharp teeth - too many sharp teeth. “He wants you to see the lights this way, Nate.”

“Bram, I d-d-don’t want t-to-”

“Do I look like I give a fuck what you want? I said get down on the fucking floor with him.” Bram’s voice drops, and Nate has been with him long enough not to flinch at the change in tone, but he feels the cold wash over him regardless. Every defiance, every time Nate says ‘no’, every moment he claws back onto the hint of who he is - all of it is a moment he’s waiting for Bram to turn on him and force him to do it, anyway. “Or would you rather I got down on the floor with him?”

“Oh, no, I don’t want that,” Danny breathes, but he can’t seem to keep his eyes on them - they trail back to the Christmas lights, the evergreen smell in the room, the hint of sticky sap on the trunk where it’s riveted into the tree stand with the special plant food to make its slow death take even longer. “Nate, I want you to come lay down with me, not, not Abraham, please. Nate, can you, please?” He turns the wide, clouded blue eyes on Nate.

“Look, see?” Bram grins. “He wants you down there with him.”

“Why are y-y-you doing this?” Nate whispers, through lips that barely move. “You d-don’t want him to f-f-feel good, or be happy. Why w-w-would you g, give him something that makes him f-f-feel like this?”

“Mmmn, that’s true.” Bram cocks his head as Danny tries to wriggle himself totally out from under the tree, pushing himself up on one elbow. His eyes move back down to the braided rug, the mass of colors and textures, and he rolls onto his stomach, running his fingers over the bumps and ridges of cloth. “Maybe it’s not him I want to make miserable today.”

Nate frowns, eyes narrowing slightly, but he can’t stop watching Danny’s fingers, long and thin, the tracery of scars along the backs of his hands, the wounds reopened and cut a little deeper every time he screws up, defies an order, tries to be who he used to be. 

The bones of his wrists that stick out more than they used to, the little knob right there where wrist and hand meet that Nate just wants to hold, the underside with its thin hint of purplish-blue veins that he’d have given anything some days to lick-

He shakes it off, with effort, and swallows against the dryness of his mouth. “And you th-th-think giving me wh-what I want with him will m-m-make me miserable?”

“I know it will.” Bram shrugs, casual as can be. “You don’t want him like this. But I know you better than anyone else in the world will ever know you, Nate. I know you’ll say yes.”

“H-How do you kn-kn-know I’ll say yes?” Nate asks, and his voice is barely a whisper of sound, but Bram hears him anyway.

“Because if you won’t,” Bram says, taking a sip from his beer, “I will.”

“Y-Y-You already do.”

Bram’s smile could freeze Arizona. “Not like I will if you say no. I know you think I hurt him, but I want you to believe me, baby, I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the ways I can make him regret every fucking breath. So yes, or no?”

“Nate,” Danny says, in a low soft voice. “Nate, come over here. Feel this rug. Shit, I haven’t been high like this since…”

“Since before you came home to me, puppy,” Bram says sweetly, and Danny’s eyes jerk up to his, wide in a face that’s gotten thinner with never eating enough. They don’t quite manage to focus on him, but even like this this, Nate can see the naked fear that crosses his face.

“Before I came home,” Danny repeats quickly, but after a second he seems to forget he was looking at Bram at all. Nate watches his jaw slacken and all his thoughts slip right through his fingers as he drops his attentions back to the rug.

“Yes or no, Nate, I haven’t got all night,” Bram says. The walls of the living room, the one large room in this tiny cabin, seem to be closing in. Smaller and smaller, the way all his choices and his understanding of himself gets closed in, chipped away.

“Y-Yes, you do. We have all the t-t-time in the world, out h-here.” Nate’s voice is calm, somehow, and he steps forward, moving away from Bram and the furniture and over to Danny where he lays stretched on the rug on his side, watching his own fingertips playing with a loose thread in the seam that holds two rolls of the rug together.

“Is that a yes, my love?” Bram’s voice is low, and pleased.

Nate takes all the guilt that threatens to squeeze the breath out of him, sets it aside in an empty gaping canyon of self-hatred that lives eternally in the back of his mind, and says simply, “It’s a yes.”

Danny rolls onto his back, looking up at Nate, wavy red hair falling into his eyes. It’s winter, and Danny’s hair is already getting long, past his ears and whispering along the back of his neck, twisting in soft curls across his forehead. Nate reaches out to push the hair away, and Danny hums softly. “Your fingers feel nice,” He whispers.

“G-Good,” Nate whispers back, aware of Bram’s eyes burning into him, trying to ignore it, to push it all away. Life with Bram has always been about trading away whatever he has left, to save himself in the end. And now to trade the dregs of the man that still remains, to try and save another.

By doing something he’s always wanted to do and doesn’t want to do at all.

“So, this is stupid, but I’ve been… you know, I know you’re older and you, like, know shit I don’t. But I’ve been… thinking about you, kind of a lot, I guess.” Danny looked away from him, nervously sipping his drink, and Nate reached out to take it from his hands, letting their fingertips graze each other just a little bit.

“Don’t d-d-drink so fast, you’ll g-get drunk and be harder to t-t-talk to,” Nate said, and pitched his voice into real flirtation, something he used to be fairly good at. He’d gotten rusty, trapped in that house.

“Aren’t drunk people supposed to be easier to talk to?” Danny countered, but he lets Nate take the drink and place it on the table, tilted his head to let a little hair fall into his eyes, gave Nate a toothy smile that he knew already he’d love to see more of.

“Not y-you. I like you b-b-better sober.” Nate hesitated, then leaned forward, a little more into Danny’s space. When Danny’s smile only widened, and they were nearly nose-to-nose in the little bar, neither of them wanted to pull away and break the moment.

“I think I want to see more of you,” Danny said, a whisper nearly drowned out by the music around them.

“I th-think I want to s-see more of y-y-you, too,” Nate replied, and thought - fuck Scott and Will’s advice, they didn’t know shit. Nate had gone years trapped in hell and he just wanted to be with someone again.

Besides which, Scott and Will didn’t seem to see that under all his anger, there was something that shone in Danny Michaelson.

You just had to find it and bring it out.

Nate strokes gentle fingers across his forehead, down the side of his face and his neck, over a hint of collarbone that peeks out from the neckline of his shirt. Danny shivers with a smile on his face, eyes fluttering closed and then open again. “I’m s-s-so sorry,” Nate murmurs to him, with real feeling. “I’m so s-s-sorry, Red.”

“Sssshhhhh,” Danny whispers, and his own hands slip down. Nate watches with that dryness in his mouth again as the redhead’s fingers curve around the hem of his T-shirt, grip on, and he arches his back so he can slide it right off his head, tossing it lazily to the side. The firelight catches the muscles of his arms as he moves, sets off the freckled skin. “Ssssshhh, you’re so good, Nate, you’re so nice.”

“I’m sorry,” Nate repeats, because he has to, and with Bram watching them both, he leans down to kiss the end of Danny’s nose, one of the scars along his cheekbone, up to his forehead. “I’m so sorry. J-j-just look at m-me now, okay?”

The blue eyes open, and for a moment, the two men only look at each other and smile - Danny’s hazy and drugged and beautiful, Nate’s guilty, tearful, and a little frightened.

Frightened for Danny, frightened of Bram, frightened of himself and how easily he will hand over any last remaining shred of principle or conviction if it will save Danny Michaelson even a moment of pain.

“What are you waiting for?” Bram asks, not quite snapping.

Danny tenses, then reaches out to grab Nate by the back of the neck and pull him down for a kiss. His mouth is soft, and warm - the rest of Danny always seems so cold now - and Nate lets himself be lost in the moment, tries to shift away how much he hates himself for what he’s about to do.

But it’s better, if it’s him and not Bram.

At least once.

At least for tonight.

When they break apart, foreheads still touching, Danny’s cloudy eyes try to focus on his clear green ones. “‘Kay,” Danny murmurs, their lips still nearly brushing. “Can do it. Can look-... your eyes are bleeding, Nate.”

“What?” His voice is hushed, a whisper, and he brushes the backs of his knuckles on his good hand down Danny’s neck, over breastbone, down his stomach, watching Danny arch into the touch, feeling him shift and move as Nate’s hand curves around one hip over the thin cotton pants that are the only pants he’s ever allowed to wear, no matter the weather.

“Like green sky…” Danny smiles at him, a flash of white teeth, nuzzling at his face, his hands moving up to Nate’s neck, over his shoulders, feeling at the fabric of his shirt, lost in the softness, the warmth of the heavy knit fabric. “You’re stained glass,” Danny whispers, words slightly slurred. “You’re a fucking saint sparking fucking starlight…” Nate shifts, or Danny does - he likes to hope it was Danny, for his own sake, for his own sanity. It moves their hips together, just a little, where Nate lays next to him on the floor.

“Fuck,” Danny nearly groans. “Ah…” He grabs Nate by the arms and pulls the older man on top of him, and for a half-second Nate wants to forget that anything is wrong with this, that it’s anything but his first Christmas with the younger guy who seemed like everything Bram wasn’t, everything Nate wanted.

For a while, it’s only this - a kiss, or a series of them, but they run together and Nate isn’t sure he’d count it as more than one. Hands, and Danny’s ribs stand out too much in his thin frame and Nate’s fingertips trail over each shade and hint of light. Danny whispering to him, nonsense things, and the lights of the Christmas tree still shine in his eyes and bounce off his hair.

Nate buries his bad hand in that hair, feels the softness that’s started to go brittle after nearly a full year of never eating enough.

Bram laughs - the awful off-key barking hyena laughter - and Danny freezes underneath Nate, breathing harder, clutching tightly onto him like Nate could possibly protect him from the consequences of Bram’s horrible good humor.

“J-Just look at me, Red,” Nate whispers urgently against his ear, licking at the earlobe, feeling Danny shiver again and hold him with shaking hands. “Just look right at me.” His good hand slides back down to grip Danny’s hip, to steady him against the sense of Bram’s eyes, and his heart is pounding.

He can feel Danny’s heartbeat, too, and some part of him wants to smile, because he’d always sort of wanted to lay somewhere with Danny Michaelson, feeling his heartbeat right through his skin.

Not like this, though.

Not like this.

I should have known Bram would never, ever let me go. But it never occurred to me that if he found me with someone, he’d take them, too.

Nate drops his mouth to Danny’s neck now, kissing gently along the scarring starting there from the barbed wire that Bram sometimes wraps around his throat, making him practice breathing until he bleeds. When he nips at the scarred skin, Danny lets out the first real, true noise. 

When he closes his mouth on it, the noise gets louder.

“Well this is getting interesting.” Nate would gladly stab Bram like he once stabbed his sister, leave him dying on the kitchen floor, and he and Danny would flee through the woods and find civilization, go back home-

But he can’t hurt Bram. And even if this is the only night he can protect, he can’t let Bram have Danny to destroy if he’s given even the barest hint of a choice.

Danny had tensed again at Bram’s voice, and Nate catches his eyes as he nearly turns to look at the monster sitting on the couch wearing skin like a man. “No, no, just look right at me,” He says, a little urgently, turning Danny’s face back to his. “It’s going to be oh-okay. It’s okay. I d-d-don’t want to, I promise, I just… I have to-”

“Of course you want to,” Bram interrupts, shifting where he sits, slowly leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, beer still in hand. Outside, snow falls in a perfect picturesque white. “And if you don’t… I will.”

“I know that, B-Bram,” Nate says, in a voice that’s not quite pleading. “I kn-know. Just-”

“Sssshhhh.” Danny cranes his neck, moving his head up from the floor enough to kiss Nate’s cheek, scarred, rough-skinned hands pulling Nate back in for another kiss. “S’okay if it’s you,” Danny says, softly, and he smiles softly, and nearly everything about Danny is soft, and sweet, and beautiful.

And fogged and drugged, high and off-limits in Nate’s mind - but the choice he’s been given is to cross his own lines or watch Danny be torn apart again.

Tonight, just this one night, he has the chance to trade away one more piece of the principled, moral man he used to think he was. He gives away his certainty that he’d never do anything like this - that he would never, ever be this person - because if he doesn’t, Bram will do something far worse.

“Always if it’s you,” Danny continues, and now it’s his lips against Nate’s neck, tongue lapping at the slowly fading pink marks from Ashley’s knives, her little game of seeing how long it took him to scream. “I want you, too.” Danny’s hands are on his shirt and Nate lets him pull it up, pull it over his head, muss up his black hair.

He shouldn’t do this.

He has to do this.

He wants to do this.

But… not like this.

“Saint Nate,” Danny says, tone playful, consonants soft and slurred together, as his hands move over Nate’s chest and torso, play along his sides, slide down under the waistband of his pants until Nate nearly gasps. “Ha,” Danny grins at him. “Look at you, Saint Nate. Saint… Saint Nathaniel. Patron saint of, of puppies, and… fuck, what’d he put in my drink? Shit, you feel so good-”

Nate groans, and gives up, and his good hand slips into Danny’s pants, too, searches and finds, begins to move. When Danny’s hips jerk up hard, Nate pauses, but one scarred hand grabs at his wrist and presses his palm down right where it is.

“Don’t stop,” Danny murmurs, and uses his hand to show Nate what he wants him to do.

“Fuck, R-Red,” Nate groans into his neck, into his warm skin, as Danny moves against him. “I’m so sorry.”

This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.

“Say, what’s in this driiiiink,” Danny sings, and his voice is cracked and hideously off-key. Danny has an awful singing voice, and still Nate finds himself smiling. “Baby, it’s cold outsiiiiiide…”

“Sssshhhh.” Nate shifts back, resting his weight on his legs, a knee on either side of Danny’s hips. Still on his back on the floor, Danny’s eyes drift through the room, landing but never staying, and finally… finally they make it back to Nate.

When they land on him, they stay.

“Stop holding out on him, baby,” Bram says. His voice is impatient, not quite snapping, but Nate knows it for what it is - not annoyance but hunger. Bram wants him to be miserable, to hate himself, for spend the next few days castigating himself for being a fucking criminal, a piece of shit, the worst thing in the world. “He’s asking for it.”

“Please,” Danny says softly, and Nate’s hatred of himself shatters - for the moment only for now - under the affection there. Written on Danny’s face is all the sweetness Nate once thought you had to find in him, right there to be had, right on the surface.

“H-How can you w-w-want me like this?” Nate asks, and he doesn’t mean the drugs (although he means that, too). No, he wants to know how Danny can want him when they are trapped somewhere in the woods together but Danny is tortured and cut to shreds and beaten and destroyed piece by piece, while Nate eats at the table and doesn’t have to ask and sleeps in a bed without having to earn it.

He wants to know how Danny can want him, after everything that’s happened because Nathaniel Vandrum had a fucking crush on him.

“I wanted you before,” Danny whispers, fumbling at the button of Nate’s jeans, having trouble getting his hands to close well enough. “Why would I stop now? C’mere, Saint Nate. S’okay if it’s you, I want it to be you. C’mere.”

The lights from the Christmas tree light Danny’s skin with little hints of blue, and red, and green, and yellow. The lights glint in his hair and on the line of his freckled shoulder. They dance over some of the freckles on his face, and Nate can’t quite stop himself from kissing his favorite little cluster of them, right along the scar on Danny’s left cheek.

I could never deserve this.

I never wanted it like this.

I want you so badly it hurts.

I’ll hate myself tomorrow, if you’ll let me - but I don’t think you will.

“Merry Christmas,” Danny says, with an odd, lopsided, goofy little smile.

Nate shakes off the icy blue eyes that watch them from the couch, and lowers his head to kiss Danny again. “Merry Ch-Christmas.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

BTHB: Touch Starved (Danny/Nate)

@badthingshappenbingo​ request answered! Anon requested: Would you be willing to write the ‘touch starvation’ prompt with Nate and Danny? Thanks!

I had initially thought I’d do a post-rescue piece, but this ended up going in a during-captivity direction, so if that isn’t what you wanted, Anon, I’d be happy to write another one, just send me an ask and let me know! Timeline: Late October the year Danny turns 25, so post-Happy Birthday.

Tagging the Danny people: @bleeding-demon-teeth​, @spiffythespook​, @special-spicy-chicken​!

CW: Implied/referenced sexual assault/rape, implied/referenced/visible evidence of torture and violent abuse, discussion of harm to animals (no animals harmed in this fic). Brief suicidal ideation (just a mention)

“How long is he going to be gone?” Danny asks, stopping by a large fallen log, dropping into a crouch to look at some mushrooms that were growing out of the decaying bark, a hint of green moss. He pulls at the rough leather collar around his throat, wincing at the always raw or half-healing skin underneath that stings when exposed to the air.

There’s a little padlock on the buckle now to make sure Nate won’t take it off before Abraham gets home. He used to, and Abraham caught him, once, when he was trying to rub antibiotic cream on Danny’s throat and Abraham came home earlier than they expected.

Now it’s padlocked on.

“He s-s-said three to f-four days this time,” Nate replies, standing a few feet away with his own eyes watching a little moth that had settled itself against a tree trunk, nearly invisible with wings the exact shade of the bark, with the same appearance of rough texture.

“Good. I like when he goes for four days.” Danny just watches him for a moment, looking at the older man with his black hair a little shaggy, hanging down to his eyes, the stubble he lets grow on his face when Abraham doesn’t care if he shaves today. There’s a focus in those green eyes, as they watch the moth close its wings and then open them again, that Danny loves.

He wants that focus on him, but he can’t have that, because Nate belongs to Abraham and Danny’s not a person anymore. He’s not allowed to have things, to want things. To want people. He’s not allowed to want Nate.

He doesn’t even want Nate, does he? He just wants… someone. Anyone who isn’t Abraham Denner. Someone to care about him, to love him, to touch him.

No, it is Nate. He wants Nate to love him.

He wants Nate to care about him, because he can’t remember what it was like to be cared about in a way that didn’t involve… all of this.

I wish you would touch me, he thinks, and then banishes the thought and turns back to the moss, trying not to be all too aware of Nate’s shoulders beneath the warm, dusky blue cable-knit wool of his sweater, the way he stands in the loose-fit heavy khaki pants, the way Danny knows exactly how well they fit around his hips.

Walking traps is hard on Nate the last few weeks, the whole circuit takes a few miles when you do it all at once and having to step over the logs and tree branches and other things, following the marked trail from snare to snare, leaves him limping by the end, teeth ground together, jaw set. Danny’s not sure what happened exactly, only that Nate and Abraham had some kind of fight when Danny was last in the cellar, and Abraham came away with scratches on the side of his neck and the first bruise Danny has ever seen on him and Nate came away with a leg that got hurt, somehow, someway.

So the trail is harder for him, now, while it heals. 

But Danny’s not allowed to go alone, and he’s not allowed to help Nate walk, either, because that would mean touching him. No one but Abraham touches Danny now, except when Abraham thinks it’s funny to have Nate hurt him.

When Abraham laughs at his protests, looks right in his eyes, and then Nate can’t say no, just like nobody can say no, after a while. Nate turns white as a ghost after and drinks until he passes out and he probably doesn’t want to be anywhere near Danny anyway, it’s just that they’re the only people here who aren’t Abraham, they only have each other.

But Nate stopped touching him at all, after the last time Abraham made him do it. He thinks months ago, but Danny doesn’t know time as well as he used to, he forgets. Not too long after Abraham said it was his birthday, that he’s twenty-five now.

Not long after that, one night it was really bad, and Nate hasn’t so much as brushed against him since. Hasn’t snuck out at night to watch movies with him, invite him onto the couch, touch his fingers while they work together in the garden.

Nothing.

Nothing but Abraham’s hands.

It’s been so long and Danny just wishes, just for a second, that there was someone to touch him where it didn’t end in something else, something worse. He wants touch without shame, touch that isn’t forced on him or part of a barter, touch that doesn’t end in a knife or demands or orders or that barking high-pitched laughter that worms into his head and won’t stop.

He wants someone (Nate) to put a hand to the small of his back, just rest it there, and remove it again without having to trail fingers up his neck to the carved-in scarring of who he belongs to. He wants a hand in his hair that doesn’t pull until it hurts. He wants touch without pain, without the guilt in Nate’s eyes, without crying or exhaustion or being told what to do.

He can’t have that, though, and all he wants - all he wants in the whole world, now, a world that is narrow and caged-in - is just to hold Nate’s hand, maybe, just for a goddamn second.

No. Not allowed.

Wrong thoughts.

(who do your hands belong to? is this body yours, or mine?)

Y-yours, it’s yours, it’s not mine anymore, not my body.

(good boy)

He’s not going to think about Nate’s hands, calloused from when he chops wood, too, from the work he does alongside Danny in the garden during spring and summer. The way they went from looking almost delicate and meant for opening books, taking annotations and typing lectures, to roughened and coarse outdoorsman’s hands. He won’t think about the way Nate had brushed sweaty hair back from his face when he was sick and sometimes slept beside him on the floor.

He’s not going to think about the sweetness of Nate’s eyes on his, sometimes, when Abraham isn’t looking. He’s not going to think about how that stopped, too, after the bad night where Abraham had had a new idea and made Nate carry it out.

He’s not going to think about what he wants and cannot have.

He’s not going to think about any of it because it’s not for him.

He’s not going to think about how sometimes it’s not just his stomach that’s hollow, but his skin. His scarred-up worthless skin that feels hungry, for someone, for anyone who won’t hurt him. Right down to the tips of his fingers. He’s carved out into a yawning nothing that can’t stop craving someone, something else, something more, something better.

There is nothing better.

This is the best life will ever be again.

Don’t think about his hands.

Danny squints at the half-decayed hollow log, trying to distract himself. Did he read in one of the books they make you read in school that moss mostly grows on the north side of things? He feels like he might have heard that, once upon a time, in the life that he never lived, that doesn’t exist, because there was never anything before Abraham.

The mushroom cap gives a little under the touch of his finger, and he wishes he could feel it better, that his hands weren’t rough and calloused and half-numb after so long, the only part of him that never notices the cold. He wishes it was someone’s (Nate’s) skin. The moss he can kind of feel, a sort of soft brush of texture, and he looks at the deep dark green of it, smiling faintly. 

Moss only grows on the north side of trees. Wasn’t there a character in a book who got lost, and they remembered that trying to find their way home? Which would mean if he walked the other way, the way the moss didn’t grow, he would go south. South and south and south, walk out of the woods one day, cross the border, go home. Take Nate with him and then maybe one day ask if he wanted to, if he could-

Stop it.

This is home.

Don’t think about that, that belongs to Abraham now.

(you’re here until I’m done with you, little Red, and let me reassure you that you don’t want me to be done with you)

Besides, he didn’t know shit about moss. He’s not allowed to read the navigation parts of the survivalist books the body left behind in the cabin, Abraham ripped those pages out (“H-how fucking d-d-dare you, Bram, that’s a book, you c-c-can’t just r-rip apart books l-ike that! That’s like a fucking s-s-sacrilege!”) and left him only the cooking and the ways to make your own medicine. Danny only knows what he’s allowed to know, what it’s okay to know. He only knows what Abraham says he should know.

Everything else is buried in the pain, and he lets it stay there, down in the muck, like the animals in the tar pits Dad took them to see when they were kids (no he didn’t, you never did that, you’re making it up). Abraham is always telling him his memories are wrong, full of holes, fucked up beyond repair. That he shouldn’t try to use his mind or think, because thinking isn’t what he’s here for, is it?

(you’re here for me)

Yes, Abraham, for-… for you, I’m here for you.

(good boy)

Danny bites his lower lip, and thinks about the bruise on his hip, still aching and made of dark purples and blacks today, teeth marks in perfect half-circles on each side of where the bone stuck out under the skin, slightly scabbed. Abraham had drawn blood, last night, a gift to remember him by, since he was going on a supply run and leaving the two of them here.

A reminder, but it was still better than it used to be. He used to chain Danny up in the living room for supply runs, take the key with him. Nate would bring him food from the kitchen and he could reach the bathroom on the chain, so it was really okay, he didn’t mind, he didn’t.

Especially because when Abraham was gone, Nate would sleep on the couch out in the living room, or next to him on the floor, just a few inches away, and sometimes when he woke up Nate’s hand was warm on top of his.

Once - just the once - Nate had said he could sleep on the couch, too, and they’d taken the cushions off the back to make it bigger and crammed themselves onto it, Danny’s long body meaning he had his feet up on the arm of the couch with the chain running off the side, but Nate had been warm next to him underneath the blanket they’d stolen from Abraham’s bed, and he’d almost felt safe.

And Abraham never knew about those wrong thoughts, about that disobedience. He never knew.

Abraham didn’t chain him up any longer, because he knew Danny wouldn’t run away anymore. Where would he go? They were so far in the woods he couldn’t possibly know how long to walk to find another person, and he couldn’t really remember his directions any longer.

He’d tried to run away a few times, and the punishments when he was caught - and he was always caught - had made him shy away from even thinking about trying to run ever, ever again.

He didn’t need to think about anything but Abraham. What Abraham wanted, what would make Abraham happy, how to be good enough for Abraham. That was all he should think about, it hurt too much to think about anything else.

(nothing should live inside your head, little puppy, but me. what I like, how I take my drinks, what I want for dinner, whether or not I’m going to cut you up today, how to make me pleased enough that I don’t need to.)

Yes, Abraham.

(there is no life before me. just our family, Nate and I and our puppy)

Just our, um, our family.

Danny twisted his mouth into a mean little smile and stared fixedly at the moss, made himself think about before.

It might be the smallest rebellion, but he had been here for years and he had almost no rebellions left, and he had to cling to even the smallest unpunished disobedience to try and remember that he’d ever been anything other than this. It felt like defiance, like waving some kind of flag, just to let himself question whether or not moss only grows on the north side of trees.

Maybe Ryan read it in school, and told him, and that’s why he can’t remember the book. Danny’s throat catches, a drift of an image of his little brother’s face the night before he’d gone to see Nate and lost everything. They’d played video games all night long, just hanging on the couch in Danny’s apartment playing Halo and drinking, bitching about the way Halo 5’s storyline went, the way their parents had acted at Christmas around Ryan’s newest boyfriend (who they didn’t like, but not because he was a boy. At least Corrine and Patrick never gave a shit about that, because if Danny had to add being in the closet to the laundry list of bullshit he had to do because of his parents, he wasn’t sure he would even have made it to adulthood). He and Ryan had spent the night being absolutely perfectly normal people with no idea they’d never see each other again.

I wish I’d hugged him before I left the next day instead of telling him he was too sweaty coming back from the gym. I wish I’d said ‘I love you’, or something else nice, just anything, anything better than ‘I’ll be back late, wish me luck’ what the shit was that, like I was a fourteen year old with a fucking crush-

No, stop it. No life before Abraham. I’m a good dog.

Besides, who even knows if that happened? Maybe you didn’t play video games at all, maybe you had a fight and you just don’t remember it, maybe you did something to deserve this and that’s why it happened, maybe you’re making this bullshit happy memory up.

I’m a good dog, I want to be good.

Maybe you just don’t remember what you did to deserve this.

(you let this happen because you knew you were born to be mine)

Maybe Ryan knows what you did to deserve this.

Abraham always says they’re not looking anymore.

(don’t you ever fucking forget)

Maybe they know why this happened to you, and that’s why they’re not looking.

There is so little sleep, never enough to eat, sometimes Abraham puts stuff in his water or just lays a pill on his tongue and he doesn’t really know, anymore, what happened and what didn’t, beyond the days and nights Abraham wants him to hurt. He’s so good at hurting, is the thing. Abraham is always telling him it’s irresistible, finding someone like him. That you can’t just put a starving man before a buffet and tell him not to eat.

He’s good at jamming himself down deep into the tiniest places he has left, and Abraham turns the rest into Red, and Red is so good, Red wants to be good, to be try harder, to be a good boy…

Danny presses at the moss again, thoughtfully, and he almost asks Nate if he knows what direction moss grows, but then he keeps is mouth shut, because… what if it’s a stupid question? What if he’s wrong? What if it’s another memory that isn’t real, just like all the others? Danny remembers a lot of false things, now, and forgets most of the true ones.

It’s safer, that way.

(up above your head. perfect, that’s perfect, that’s my good boy, trying so hard for me. oh, don’t look at me like that, puppy. you’re the one who chose the knife)

“We’re g-going to be late coming b-back from traps if you k-k-keep staring at logs,” Nate says after a long pause. Danny jumps a little, startled out of his thoughts, and turns back to him with an apology on his tongue before he realizes Nate’s voice was teasing, not upset, that he’s smiling down at Danny with that odd look he gets sometimes, where he looks at him like Danny’s a book he’s always wanted to read but he doesn’t know how to open it.

He tries not to think about that look in his eyes too often, but sometimes it follows him everywhere he goes, makes him feel like he used to feel when he was a person, shivery and awkward and a little too big for his own skin.

He tries to stop himself, but sometimes Nate’s face, with that slight half-smile that pulls at the little scar in his lip, is all that sticks in his mind at all.

“Sorry, Nate. We’re almost to the first snare, let’s, um, let’s go ahead and get to it.” Danny jumps back to his feet, towering a little over Nate when he stands all the way up, rolls his shoulders, straightens his back. Being tall, though, means opening himself up to the breeze and he shivers a little as the autumn air cuts right through his T-shirt and pajama pants, the thin sneakers he’s allowed to wear already damp around all the edges, the wet soaking into his socks.

He’ll get sick again, and as long as he can keep doing chores it’s okay, but if he gets too sick for chores, Abraham will lock him in the cellar. Danny gnaws on a bit of chapped skin on his lower lip, rubbing his hands together. He has to not get that sick. As long as he can still do his chores, it’s okay, Abraham just laughs at him when he sees his brother and talks to him through the kitchen window, just laughs because if the dishes still get done, if dinner still gets made, it’s okay.

He won’t get hurt if he can still do his chores.

He makes elderberry syrup and fire cider, takes some of both every single day. There isn’t enough food (yes there is, there’s plenty, it’s just not for you) but Abraham doesn’t care if he drinks the medicines he makes out of the survivalist book, he doesn’t care how much he has of those. Sometimes he drinks the fire cider until the acid in the vinegar makes him sick, because at least then he doesn’t feel hollowed out and light-headed from hunger.

None of it helps the sense of emptiness under his skin, the wish for something gentle, and sweet, and soft in all the violence.

Danny can’t help the twist of sadness in his chest when he finds the rabbit in the first snare still alive, but exhausted and worn out from trying to get free, little chest heaving, just lying on its side. “I’m sorry,” He says, softly, under his breath, as he crouches next to it. Nate stands close by, hands in his pockets, watching him. “I get it, you know. I get you.”

(don’t tell me you’re apologizing to the goddamn prey, little puppy)

He always apologizes to the animals they catch, and Abraham laughs at him, laughs and says dogs hunt and only the dumbest puppy would stop to say he’s sorry before doing what comes naturally. But this doesn’t come naturally, it never has, he always worries about what the little animals think of him before they die.

Sometimes he wonders if they recognize him, if they see that he’s prey, too, that he’s in a snare like theirs, the leather around his neck just like the rope.

Danny shivers hard enough to rattle the little tag that hangs off his collar, then takes a deep breath and says, all at once to Nate like the whole sentence is a single word, “Please let me have your knife for a second.”

Nate pauses, then slips the little knife he’s allowed to carry out of his pocket, opening it up. It was one of his birthday gifts from Abraham, and it’s got a black handle with silver tooled into it in the shape of vines and a deer (it’s a fucking stag, puppy, get some goddamn culture - when I was little, I met a god with a stag’s head, you know) and even Danny could admit, when he saw it, that it was gorgeous.

Before Abraham forced Nate to cut him with it to show how sharp it was.

Nate’s a person, he’s Abraham’s true love and best friend, Nate is real and Danny isn’t - so Nate gets knives. Not that knives would do them any good, here, not with Abraham. And Nate doesn’t like the knives, anyway, because he gets cut with them, too. Once he was done cutting up Danny, after all, Abraham had cut him.

“F-figured you’d w-w-want me to slit its throat,” Nate says softly, the offer still there in his voice if not in his words, the compassion in his expression. He knows Danny hates having to kill them, to take the little lives away when all they did was be born in the wrong forest at the wrong time. Abraham always makes Danny do it, laughs at him when he hesitates, or hurts him if he refuses.

“I don’t want you to do it,” Danny says, fighting the urge to pat its sad, tired little head. It’s probably crawling in bugs, honestly, and it wouldn’t appreciate the gesture, but Danny wishes someone would pat him on the head with understanding sometimes, and not just because he’s the dog.

If only someone would touch him and it didn’t hurt. That used to happen, didn’t it?

(no life before me)

“I kn-know it’s your j-job, Red, but he’s gone, for f-f-four days, so it’s n-not like he’ll know. You kn-know I n-n-never tell him any, anything like that, about y-you.”

“I know, but I still don’t want you to do it.” Danny shakes his head. “This is mine, to do, this is my job.” He takes a deep breath, my name is Red, counts to five, exhales slowly I belong to Abraham Denner.

Then he takes the knife with a murmured thanks (be grateful for every gift you are given) and reaches out, cutting the rope and not the rabbit. He cuts the rope again a few inches further down, and then again. Again and again and again, until it can’t possibly be tied back together this way.

The rabbit doesn’t run. It just lays there with the broken shreds of the snare around it, too tired to escape, staring at him with one wide eye while its little body heaves with its breath. Danny reaches out one hand, slowly, and then pulls it back.

“R-Red, wh-what did you do that for?” Nate asks, his voice slightly faint. Not angry, not upset, just… curious. “Why did you cut th-the rope? If you c-c-cut them all… we’ll have to redo th-th-them before B-Bram gets back, you… you know that, right?”

“Don’t tell him I cut the rope,” Danny whispers, hugging himself, it’s so fucking cold already and it’s only going to get colder. “I’ll fix it later. Don’t tell him.”

Did the rabbit remember a family? Are there rabbits born in little burrows in the spring to this one rabbit, that grow up and then leave and does she (or he, he supposes) remember them? When they’re gone, are the babies remembered by someone? If they disappear, or they die, does someone know that they were ever around?

Do other rabbits look for the rabbits that disappear in the woods?

“I w-won’t, Red, you know that.”

Danny just watches the little rabbit breathe, the way it lays so still you’d think it was dead except for the occasional movements of its eyes, the quick, shallow, panicked little breaths that start, gradually to slow and to settle.

Do rabbits touch each other? They must snuggle up in burrows, right? And it doesn’t have to be anything more than that, more than being warm together, reminding each other they’re alive, still here, that they made it through one more day without the wolves getting tired of playing with them, without the jaws closing around their throat.

(how much blood do you think you can lose before you black out, puppy? let’s find out)

Wh, whatever you want, Abraham, I can do whatever you want-

(I know you can, and you will, because you’re my good boy, aren’t you?)

Pl-please, please, I don’t want to die, please, please don’t kill me, please

(you’re not going to die. not tonight, anyway. if you die, you stop being my good little pup, hm? so let’s hold still and focus on staying alive tonight, there, just like this…)

Eventually, the wolf’s jaws are going to close around his throat. Eventually, he’ll be just like the rabbit, and there’s no one here to cut him loose from the snare.

It’s just Abraham and Nate, a family all their own, with their puppy.

“H-Hey.” Nate shifts from foot to foot - his leg is probably already aching, it takes nearly a third of the marked trail to even get to the first of the snares. “R-Red, we need to get moving-”

“I-I know, I know we do, I just… I just don’t want to kill them anymore,” Danny says softly, and he doesn’t move from his crouch on the ground. “I don’t want to kill the things like me, I just want to let them go. I just want them to go home.”

“Red…”

“I know, I know how it sounds, Nate, I know. Just let me be sad, okay, just for now, while he’s gone. Let me, let me be, um, be D-… be, um, me.”

That’s not your name anymore

(this body doesn’t belong to you)

Stop trying to remember the old name, it’s not yours

“Just let me not be Red, for just a second,” Danny says heavily. “While we’re alone.”

Nate is quiet, then, for so long that Danny can’t stand it and jumps up to his feet, stalking back and away without looking at him, forcing himself past the markings along the trees, not even trying to be quiet. A bird flees his noise in a flutter of wings, and he stomps on the fallen leaves, the red and yellows rotting to browns and giving under his feet, the cold damp sinking further into his feet through these stupid fucking canvas sneakers and the socks.

That was stupid, don’t tell him you think things like that. That’s dumb. Rabbits aren’t the same as you, rabbits have a fucking chance to run away. Rabbits don’t wear collars, rabbits don’t get tied to the bed, rabbits don’t, they don’t, they don’t have to-

“Fuck!” At the sudden outburst, more birds light up and squirrels shift in the branches up in the trees, leaves falling down around him. He kicks at a bush, shoves a low-hanging branch that nearly snaps back to hit him in the face, stomps as loudly as he can.

Be good, god damn it

(puppies don’t get to be angry)

Stop it, Red, stop it!

(bad dog, Red)

I’m good, I can be good, I can stop

(very bad dog, Red, now you’ll have to be fixed again)

I can do better, I’ll try harder, I can stop

He can’t. He can’t stop it, it’s boiling up inside of him and it all comes out too quickly for him to stop it, and his heart starts to pound as he kicks again, kicks at nothing but leaves, watching them float uselessly into the air and back down, bashes his foot against a tree. He’s not allowed to be angry, but he can’t stop.

Somewhere, Abraham is driving, somewhere he’ll feel it, he’ll know Danny had wrong thoughts, and when he comes back the muzzle will come back out and Abraham will lick up the blood running down his neck and laugh in his ear.

(I know everything about you. I know everything inside of you. I know every thought, every feeling, every neuron that fires inside that pretty, useless, broken little brain)

Abraham will come back and he’ll know, and there will be more hands, there are always, always hands but they never, they’re never hands that just want to hold him, it’s always hands that hurt. He’ll put the muzzle on and the headphones in so he can’t go away, so he can’t be someone else, so Abraham can watch him cry.

(god I wish I could bottle those fucking tears, puppy, you taste so good)

He screams, wordlessly, an animal sound of fear and rage and his hate for himself, the shame that he can’t run anymore, he doesn’t even want to. Where would he go? There’s nowhere, no one is looking for him, no one will ever find him here. Abraham is right, he’s right about everything, people like Danny were made for this. Only this. Forever this, until Abraham gets tired of him.

He screams, and he screams, and he screams because when Abraham comes back he won’t be able to scream anymore. He screams himself hoarse and Nate doesn’t stop him, doesn’t even move, just watches him and Danny can feel the eyes on his back.

“What did I fucking do?” He screams into the woods, his voice ragged and broken, and the trees don’t answer, and the birds don’t answer, and the animals don’t answer. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, but it must have been horrible, it must have been worth hell, because hell is what he’s living in, and he’ll be here until he dies.

When Nate grabs him by the elbow he spins around too fast and makes himself dizzy, stumbling to try and catch his balance. He wants to hate Nate Vandrum - the person, the true love, who gets to sit on the couch and sit at the table and eat all the food he wants, Nate who gets to be human - but he can’t, because what he wants more than to let the anger inside of him take over is for someone, anyone, to help him stop it; to stuff it back down where it’s safe, where Abraham can’t cut or burn or bleed it out of him again.

“R-Red,” Nate says, softly, and his grip on Danny’s arm is firm but it doesn’t hurt, and it’s been so long since anyone but Abraham touched him, really - even when Nate does it’s because Abraham tells him to, and that’s not the same, that’s just an extension of Abraham’s hands, wearing a different face. “Red, please-”

“I’m sorry I did that dumb thing with the rabbit,” Danny whispers, throat aching, eyes hot with tears but they don’t fall, he won’t let them, he keeps them glittering against his eyes, blurring the vision of the older man watching him, so he can’t see his face. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not allowed to be angry, I know I am, I know… I’m so sorry-”

“N-No, it’s okay, I, uh, I l-liked that you d-d-did that thing with the rabbit. That you let it go.” There’s a note to Nate’s voice, something he knows but doesn’t know, it’s been so long since he’s heard it.

Danny rubs the back of his hand against his eyes and blinks, looks at Nate more closely. The green eyes are warm, on his, and he swallows hard against a sudden awareness that Nate’s eyes are always warm when they look at him, aren’t they?

“You did?” He doesn’t mean his voice to come out so soft, barely above a whisper, but it does. Nate’s other hand moves, jerks a little, like he wants to do something with it but he doesn’t know what. “You’re not mad that I got angry? Puppies aren’t allowed-”

“I’m not mad. And you, you’re, you’re n-not…” Nate loosens the grip on his elbow, and he doesn’t want him to but he has no idea how to say it. Please, you haven’t touched me in weeks, please, I need touch that doesn’t hurt me. “We h-h-have plenty stored up. It’s f-f-fine. You’re right, th-they should get to go home… the rabbits.”

“I want them to go home,” Danny says, a little miserably, and sees the depth of understanding in Nate’s eyes and he clings to it, to the shred of being a person that Nate still seems to see in him. “I don’t want to see them in the snares anymore. I just want them to go home, where-… where there aren’t any people like, like us - like him - where there aren’t any… hands, that won’t stop, I just…”

I want to go home.

There is no home but here.

I want to go home.

“I kn-know,” Nate says, softly, and he takes a step closer, and then another. Danny can feel him, almost, the way he’s warm when everything else is cold now. “I know. I w-w-want them to go h-h-home, too. Y-you can go back to the cabin, if you w-want, I can walk the traps the r-r-rest of the way by myself.”

“No,” Danny says softly, and he can’t stop looking down at Nate’s hands, which he’s not supposed to think about. How they’ve changed since they got here, gone all rough and so have Danny, just in a different way “I don’t want to be by myself right now.”

“A-Are you sure? You c-c-could sit on the couch. He wouldn’t know. You kn-know I don’t tell him anything ab-about you, or what you say to me.”

“Does he ask?” Danny takes a breath, watches Nate step even closer, close enough that Danny can smell his cologne, the bottle Abraham buys him for Christmas each year. The forest around them seemed quieter now, just the usual rustle of leaves in the slightest breeze. “What I tell you, what I talk about?”

Nate pauses, watching him thoughtfully, and then he nods. “He d-does.”

“You tell him anything he wants, when he looks right at you,” Danny says, but it’s without a hint of blame. He was angry, at first, that Nate gave up and gave in so easily. He understands, now. You can’t do anything else, if Abraham looks at you long enough. You can’t do anything but what he wants, what he tells you to do.

He’s close enough now that the change in the air is real, the hint of another person’s presence, someone he isn’t afraid of. The only person left he isn’t afraid of. Nate swallows hard, in a way Danny can see shift the muscles of his throat the faint lines of pale circled scarring there from his time with Abraham before. “I d-don’t have to tell him about y-y-you.”

It’s an admission, Danny thinks, some kind of confession, but he’s not sure to what.

“What does that mean?”

“I d-don’t know. Just that it… doesn’t always w-w-work, when it’s about y-you.” Nate looks him over again, licking at his lips nervously, pressing them together in this habit he has that Danny has seen, over and over again, while they’ve been here. “It d-doesn’t always… I’m sorry.”

Danny laughs, bitterly, hands slowly going up over his face, blocking out the world around them. “I’m fucking sorry too, Nate. I’m so goddamn sorry, and maybe when I’m dead I’ll get to say I’m sorry for whatever I did to, to earn this, to make this happen to me. Maybe when he gets tired of me and I’m dead-”

“You w-won’t die here.” Nate grabs him by the arms, and Danny stumbles forward until Nate is holding onto him, arms so tight around him, and Danny’s knees nearly buckle. “N-not you, Red, n-n-not you, I won’t let you die h-here…”

He hasn’t been touched in so long like this, just held, just hugged and held onto, and he drops his head down, curving over himself until his head is on Nate’s shoulder.

Scratchy sweater fabric against his cheek, against the itching, healing muzzle scars, and Nate’s hand is in his hair, and Danny doesn’t cry but he feels the scream still bubbling in his throat, trying to make its way out.

“You n-never did a single fucking thing wrong, Danny,” Nate whispers, fiercely, and Danny’s eyes close at the name, the name he only thinks to himself sometimes just to try and remember that he used to have one, a person’s name, a people name, that he was something better than this, something more.

“You h-h-have to c-call me, call me Red, Nate,” Danny whispers. There’s a pause, and then he puts his arms up around Nate, too, slides them around his waist, and he knows this waist so well for so many terrible reasons but for just now, right now, he tries to know it for a good one.

“I don’t. I can c-c-call you whatever I want, r-right now, when he’s not here, and I w-w-want to call you Danny, so please, please l-let me, just for n-now, just for r-r-right now, please,” Nate whispers against his ear, and holds him like he’s real, like he deserves it, and Danny can’t let go of him.

“Why did you stop touching me?” He asks, and he keeps his head buried against Nate’s shoulder so he won’t see his face at the question. “It’s been weeks, I can’t live with only him touching me, why did you stop?”

“He m-m-makes me hurt you,” Nate says softly back. “I, it’s so hard to, to think that I h-h-have to hurt you all th-the time, and then I thought you m-m-must hate that someone who h-hurts you would be anywhere near, near you, I just… I just th-thought you wouldn’t want me to.”

“I do want you to,” Danny says softly, lips moving against the fabric of his sweater, feeling the warmth of it, the warmth of his body through the fabric, the strongly muscled shoulders, the rough hands that slide up into his hair but that’s all they do, they don’t pull, they don’t hurt, they’re just… there. “I want you to. I want something good, too, I can’t-… I can’t be in the snare alone, I can’t, I n-need you with me, too, Nate. Please, please, please don’t stop touching me, don’t, don’t make his hands be the only ones I remember anymore, please…”

“Sssshhhhhh. I’m right h-here with you.” Nate presses a kiss to the side of his head, just something gentle and reassuring, and Danny moves back to look at his face. Nate swallows, hard, taking the movement as rejecting the kiss, as not wanting it, and starts to pull back from him. “S-sorry, Danny, I’m sorry, I sh-shouldn’t have, I-”

Danny leans down and kisses him, all at once, a press of his cold lips to Nate’s warmer ones, the barest brush. When he pulls away Nate doesn’t go after him, doesn’t force him back down, doesn’t get angry. He’s not going to be hurt for that, or by it. That kiss was… safe.

Nate looks dazed, like maybe the book he wanted to read opened all on its own, and he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to find in there.

“Don’t stop touching me,” Danny says softly, and grabs Nate’s sweater with both hands, pulling him close, leaning down to kiss him again.

This time, Nate’s hands go up to his arms, curve around his shoulders. Danny moves in stumbling steps until his back’s against a tree, and Nate’s chest and stomach are pressed to his, the pressure of hips against his own is safe and nothing bad will happen to him here.

Nate’s mouth is gentle against his, the hands don’t move from around his shoulders. They don’t roam. They stay right where they are, and the buzzing despair and Abraham’s voice in his head goes quiet, goes silent, and all he hears is the birds and the breeze in the trees and Nate breathing, the soft sound of their mouths together.

“Danny-” Nate whispers against him. “Danny, is this r-r-really what y-you-”

“Shut up,” Danny whispers back, slides his hands up behind Nate’s head, kisses him again and again and again, and none of it hurts. “Call me Danny again.”

“D-Danny,” Nate whispers, and kisses the corner of his mouth. “Danny,” and a kiss to the scar along his cheekbone. Another whisper, another kiss to his cheek, then one to his jaw, then one to his neck just above the red skin rubbed raw by his collar, back up to his mouth. Everywhere his mouth skims Danny's skin it lights up - the way it used to feel when boys kissed him, when he kissed them, when it used to be something he wanted. It's something he wants, now. “Danny. You’re sure?”

“For now I am,” Danny says softly. “While he’s gone.”

“Okay,” Nate says, and presses one more kiss to his mouth, looking up into his eyes. “For now. Wh-wh-while he’s g-gone.”

Danny gives him a lopsided grin, slides arms up around his shoulders, and holds onto him for dear life.

This is the best life will ever be again.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

BTHB: Grabbed by the Hair

New @badthingshappenbingo​ piece: @special-spicy-chicken​ requested: Bthb grabbed by the hair for Nate? 

Grabbed by the hair for Nate it is! Remember, bloodstain = requested, puppy sticker = fulfilled. Feel free to request off the bingo card or just, you know, anything - I’ve had requests for “please for the love of god let them be happy for six minutes”, “dog kennel/cage for Danny”, and my favorite ask so far “just please more Ashley please”.

Timeline: More than a year into Nate’s initial captivity with the Denners

CW: Knives, blood, forced shaving, manhandling, restraints, and some serious noncon-dubcon kissing and, uh, a bit more than that. Call it rated R? You have been warned/welcomed/disclaimed.

Tagging @bleeding-demon-teeth​ and @spiffythespook​!

“I really don’t see why I h-have to do this,” Nate says, testing the leather buckled tightly around his wrists, subtly pulling to see if there’s any give. There isn’t, but he didn’t really expect there to be. Instead, the leather digs hard into his forearms and only seems to tighten with every hint of struggle, forced back and behind him, the inside of his elbows digging into the chair. He had to push himself against the wooden back, posture uncomfortably straight, just keep from aching. “I am perfectly capable of sh-sh-shaving myself.”

Shit, where the fuck did the stutter come from? He can’t even remember exactly when it started, a few weeks, maybe a couple of months ago. Like some connection between his brain and his mouth had gotten interrupted, living here, wires crossed. Breathing their air, cooking their food, sleeping with Bram, lost in his eyes every single time and it felt like it took longer and longer to come back, after.

Something had been snapped, inside of him, and he struggles now to speak where it had always, always been effortless before.

But he tries not to think about before. Bram always says it only makes things harder to try and remember a life before him. It’s easier if he doesn’t remember how proud he was to get his first teaching job, the time he’d spent putting together plans for that very first semester… just easier to live like he never did anything but wait around to be chosen, to be found.

(what kind of life did you live before me? no life at all, baby, so just forget it)

It’s just easier, to think of it that way - and still, in the back of his mind, Nate wonders if he can ever teach again. If Bram would let him, maybe, if he promised he’d come back home every day…

Don’t do this - this isn’t your fucking home. Don’t start thinking of it as home.

“I need the practice,” Ashley says with a shrug. She’s been back from a hunt for a few hours and she’s lit up from the inside out like she’s walked out of a lightning strike, wearing tiny black pajama shorts and a black tank top that does nothing to disguise the scratches she’s covered with, wounds from someone trying to defend themselves right to the end. They’re littered across her shoulders and neck, one thin mark up the side of her face. Her hair hangs lank and unwashed, totally unlike Bram’s shimmering waves of white-blonde, but predator snaps and cracks around her in the air, the deepest base-instinct part of Nate’s brain begging him to find some way to run.

When she leans over to look at him, the hairs stand up on his arms and the back of his neck. His hackles go up, around Ashley, and Nate hadn’t even realized people had hackles like this before her. He’d never been such a slave to his instincts before, to what he used to disparagingly call his ‘reptile brain’.

Reptile brain - primate brain, all the long millions of years of ancestors and evolution - begged him to do something, anything, to get himself out of this.

“Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I gave a man a good shave?” She sighs, mournfully, and her eyes are so like Bram’s but where things shift and move beneath the ice-blue surface in his, Ashley’s eyes are flat. Featureless. Empty.

If Bram’s eyes are a lake with monsters lurking just beneath, Ashley’s are a glacial desert where all the life has long since been desiccated and blown away in the wind. There might be bones inside Ashley, but nothing more.

“In general, or wh-where he survived the shave?” Nate is proud of the sarcastic note in his voice, his refusal to let his nervousness infect it. He settles himself back into the kitchen chair they’ve moved into the upstairs bathroom, eyeing the items laid out on the sink. It’d be a little reassuring if his ankles hadn’t been tied to the chair legs, at least, but no… he’s pretty thoroughly strapped down at this point, and he trusts Ashley Denner with a straight razor about as far as he can kick her.

Not that he technically wants to be anywhere near her, but with the two of them, he doesn’t get much of a choice.

Ashley snorts. “Oh, they rarely survived it. But they could have, if I had wanted them to. I just…” She waves one hand carelessly in the air, and Nate tries not to watch her fingers move. There’s always blood under her fingernails and ground into her knuckles, like a farmer’s hands caked in ancient dirt. “You know how it is.”

“No,” Nate says evenly. “I d-don’t.”

“You will,” She replies, a hint of irritation in her voice - but it’s a resigned, affectionate irritation, and he watches her eyes move to Bram, the indulgent smile on her face. “According to my brother, if he ever gets off his ass to dedicate you.”

“Not ready yet,” Bram says from behind him. “You know if they’re not ready, it doesn’t work.”

“Like me,” Ashley says, thinking, one bony narrow hip jutting to the side. There’s a flash of pale stomach were her tank top rides up, just a little, and Nate swallows back disgust at the deep fingernail scratches there, too - slowly closing up. By tomorrow morning they’ll be gone. “I wasn’t ready, and it didn’t work all the way.”

“Not like you, Ash. You were still ready. It still worked. Just… well. You came out of it just fine, right?”

“Did I?” Ashley’s eyes go down to Nate’s. There’s a flash of a smile, bright and shining, just like Bram’s smile but entirely devoid of the warmth, the affection, the love he gives. “Did I come out all right, d’you think, Nate?”

Nate doesn’t flinch away from her. Never flinch, they hate it when you pull away from them. Instead, he raises one eyebrow very slowly. It’s a skill he practiced over and over in the mirror, once upon a time. “That r-remains to be seen,” He says, and his voice is low and deep and perfectly even. It gives absolutely nothing away

Ashley’s smile widens, something dangerous and murderous there, and she spins to pick up the straight razor and leather strop. Nate lets out a breath of air all at once, telling himself he won this round.

“Ssshhhh, you’re okay,” Bram murmurs behind him, sitting on the edge of the old claw-footed tub. He’s perched there like some malevolent fucking pigeon in his own loose pants and shirt, feet resting on the spindle on the back of Nate’s chair, just below his hands.

Ashley and Bram might be dressed, but Nate has to be naked for the whole goddamn experience, apparently. Which he absolutely does not appreciate, especially not because when he looks up he can see himself in the mirror, the thinner face and shadows under his eyes, the bruises across his neck and body, bandages where Bram cuts him every fucking night.

If only he didn’t get so lost in Bram, lost enough to like it, he might be less ashamed of them.

“I know I’m okay,” Nate says softly, turning his head a little to catch the flash of clean, shining wavy hair behind him, the hint of Bram’s black shirt and pants, the curve of a shoulder. It’s all blurred in his peripheral vision, but still, he can see it well enough.

Bram’s presence is a constant cold along his back, the knowledge that he will melt away and fade, sooner or later, like he always, always does. But Nate turns his eyes back to Ashley, for now, and his mind stays clear.

Ashley slides the blade of the razor back and forth on the strip of leather, humming tunelessly to herself, and Nate finds his eyes caught on a particularly deep scratch that runs up her left arm, nearly from elbow to shoulder. “Wh-why did you l-let yourself get hurt like that?” He asks, and she pauses in her movements, a slow smile on her wide lips, nostalgic and starry-eyed when she turns to look back at him.

Schlip. Schlip. Schlip. The razor picks its rhythm back up, the sharp blade that will soon be at his cheeks, his chin, his neck.

“Because I was bored,” She replies, simply. “And starving. I let him think he had a chance, for a while. I like to play.” She sighs, dreamily, and Nate thinks of one of his students sitting in his office one day, sighing like that about one of the books he’d been teaching, thinking the hero was so romantic, and misunderstood, and Nate had thought to himself, Percy Shelley would have loved you. Briefly.

“When I’m done, I want him to cook me a steak,” Ashley says not to Nate himself but to Bram behind him. Schlip, schlip, schlip, goes the slow and steady rhythm of the razor on the strop. Nate tries not to listen, but feels something in him relax in relief - if she wants him to cook her a steak, she’s not going to kill him.

Not today.

“Mmmmn, when you’re done I need about forty-five minutes with him first,” Bram retorts, and Nate’s heart drops to his stomach, his eyes lowering to the tile floor. He’s scrubbed this grout for hours to get it clean after years of their mostly-benign neglect. “Then he’ll cook you a steak. He’ll be bloody, though.”

Ashley is silent, but Nate doesn’t look up, not this time.

“I like it bloody,” She says, finally. “I always like it bloody.”

“Mine,” Bram warns her, and one cold hand slides over Nate’s shoulder and down over his collarbone, fingertips skimming the line of the bone under his skin. His voice goes low and serious. Wolves fighting over an elk leg. “Not yours. He’s mine.”

“I meant the steak, of course, you jealous baby,” Ashley says with an affectionate sneer, and puts the straight razor down for the moment. She turns on the sink, and with a low gurgle of ancient pipes, the water starts to run in a constant, reassuring rush of sound as they wait for it to warm.

The main bathroom in this old house is halfway between the two largest bedrooms, right in the center of the hallway, just next to the staircase down to the first floor. Nate keeps it as clean as he can - Bram and Ashley don’t clean for themselves, and Nate had at first promised himself he wouldn’t turn into some kind of fucking servant, but that had lasted until he couldn’t take their squalor any longer.

Now it was all clean, which at least was reassuring, since he was pretty certain he wouldn’t die of an infection, even if he died of whatever they did when Bram lost this weird delusion he had that they were in some kind of relationship.

“Now, Nate,” Bram says in a voice that’s not quite a purr, right into his ear so he jumps at the sudden loudness of the sound. How does he move so fucking silently? “Ashley is going to give you a shave, with a straight razor. They used to do this way back-"

“I know,” Nate cuts in, his voice slightly softer for Bram than it is for Ashley. When Bram’s fingers graze the back of his neck and slide up into the back of his black hair, he swallows against the little shiver of pleasure down his spine, the faintest curl of warmth. Bram knows him by now, every inch of him, knows exactly where to touch and when and how much. “I know h-how shaving worked. I t-t-taught fucking 18th and 19th century lit, Bram. Historical context is k-kind of important. Everyone’s s-seen old-style shaving now, anyway, in Sweeney Todd or s-something.”

There’s a pause, and the arm over his chest tightens. Ashley shrugs, carelessly, her eyes on Bram behind him, and Nate finds himself laughing a little. The sound is a low, warm rumble pulled out of him against his will, and next to his ear he hears Bram hum a little in appreciation at the sound.

Nate doesn’t laugh very often, here. Not when his mind is still his own. When his mind is Bram’s, and he stops fighting the pull, sometimes he laughs all the time in the dark.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what Sweeney Todd is.”

Ashley frowns, turning back to the array of tools laid out on the sink, her back to him. There’s a scratch along one shoulder blade, a couple of bruises. They’ll heal up over the course of a day and be gone. Nate has seen it happen, over and over and over again. Small wounds simply disappear, like they never happened. But deeper wounds stick - Ashley came home with a bullet in her shoulder weeks ago and she’s still healing from that - and there’s something there he can use, if he can only figure it out.

“We don’t do a lot of popular entertainment,” Bram says, fingernails scratching gently into his scalp, soothing and pleasant. “Maybe you can take me out sometime, Nate. I’ll see a show with you.”

Nate goes still, mind working, and Ashley laughs at him. “Oh, don’t look so hopeful. You’d be lost the whole time. He’s not stupid. Now let’s get that shit off your face.” Her eyes, identical to Bram’s but somehow totally different at the same time, flick up to meet her brother’s just behind his head.

“I like him better clean-shaven,” Bram says, his voice low and sweet and Nate finds himself curling his fingers until his hands are fists, cuffed together behind the back of the chair. “Always have. I think he’s been refusing to shave just to bother me.”

“Honestly, Brammie, just make him.” Ashley flashes a sharp-toothed smile, turning to the sink to pick up a washcloth as steam began to show from the water running from the faucet, finally hot. She stuck her hand right under the flow of water, letting the washcloth soak it up. That was another thing Nate had noticed, and didn’t know if he could use - they didn’t seem to feel heat very easily, either of them. Dead nerves, maybe? He’s been here for a year or so, trying to figure them out, trying to decide how to escape, and slowly beginning to wonder if there would ever be a chance for that. “He’s yours, right? Just look him in the eye and tell him to shave.”

“Hm, tried that.” Bram’s arm tightens a little around his chest, almost defensively. “He’s not so good with dexterity when he’s like that. Cut himself pretty badly.”

“Oh.” Ashley pauses, chewing on her bottom lip in confusion, then brightens. “Oh! I remember that. I thought you did that to him. You know, like…” She gestures at the bandage across Nate’s shoulder, the newest one from last night.

(listen to you… you like that, huh?)

Nate turned his head to the side, trying not to feel the way his face reddened at the reminder.

(every second of the life you lived without me was a waste of your potential, darling, we’re going to make something special out of you)

“Sadly, no. You know I don’t want to fuck up my darling’s face, Ash. Come on, let’s get him shaven. You’re the one who said you wanted to do this. I’m the one letting you. So let’s get it done.”

Ashley grins like light glinting dully off a rusty, bloody blade. Nate holds perfectly still for her, letting her rub the hot washcloth over his chin, his jaw, up over his cheeks and down his neck. The cool air kisses the wet skin afterward, making him shiver, goosebumps rising up his arms.

Bram’s arm around him tightens, and the grip on his hair slowly pulls his head back and back and back, until he can see Bram looming over him, the gentle sweetness of his smile as he leans down to slowly kiss Nate’s forehead, lingering there for just a moment.

Nate closes his eyes before he can look right at Bram’s.

He needs to be in his right mind for this, but he couldn’t have said why. Being in his right mind never did him any good.

Ashley takes a small boar’s hair brush with a knobbed wooden handle that fit perfectly in the palm of her hand, the end somewhat pale with what Nate was beginning to think might be centuries of use. She holds that under the hot water, too, taking up her humming again.

“The solitary bird of night,” Ashley sang, in a cracked soprano, vibrato trilling in her throat like an actress from the 1950’s. “Through the thick shades now wings his flight…”

She dips the brush into a small bowl, swirling it around. Nate keeps his eyes closed, listening to the clink of the brush against the side of the bowl. He could picture it, because he’d tried shaving the old-fashioned way a time or two himself (with a safety razor, because he wasn’t a murderous psychopath), the way the soap lathers up in a rush of whitish liquid and tiny bubbles. The scent of something clean drifts his way.

“Brammie, will you do the honors?” Ashley asks as she turns back around.

Bram’s grip on his hair tightens even more and he’s bent over the wooden back of the chair, the back of his neck digging hard into the old, worn-smooth wood. His back arches as his throat is fully exposed to her, and Nate holds back a nervous whine, just barely swallowing it back.

The only sound he makes is a gasp.

“Hold still for my Ashley, okay, sweetness?” Bram presses a kiss to the side of his forehead again, as Ashley leans over him.

Too close, the predator is too close, the prey instinct in him is screaming. Run, you have to run, the predator is too close.

His hands yank hard at the leather cuffs again, he’s breathing in audible panting gasps, his heart pounding in his chest in a sudden burst of fear. Ashley smiles at him, leaning over and steadying herself with a hand on his leg, thumb digging hard into the flat space just inside his hip, ice-cold palm settling over his thigh.

Run. Fucking run. These are the wolves and you are the wounded deer. Run.

He can’t run. He’s tied to a chair in a bathroom in a home he woke up in one day with no idea where he is. He’s being held by a brother and sister who seem to bristle and brighten at his fear, who look at him with pinprick pupils, whose eyes will drag him down into the darkness with them.

She lathers his neck and face with the little brush, and Nate clenches his eyes shut, trying to keep breathing through his nose, while Bram’s grip in his hair just grows tighter and tighter. She won’t kill me, he won’t let her kill me was a comforting thought but it wasn’t like it didn’t mean she couldn’t hurt him. God knew Bram hurt him all the time…

But usually Bram wanted him to enjoy it, and he is not being forced to enjoy this.

“He’s so scared already,” Ashley whispers playfully, bopping the end of his nose with the lathered brush, leaving a dollop of the white soap there. “I haven’t even started shaving yet. Hey, little man, what makes you so scared of me?”

Nate doesn’t answer her - there’s a retort in his mind, some kind of witty reply, but the connection between brain and mouth has been totally severed by the panic pumping adrenaline-soaked blood through his veins.

He doesn’t see her pick up the razor, but he flinches hard at the first pass of the cold blade, gentle as a whisker's brush from a cat, along his cheek, pulling his head to the side.

Ashley hisses. “Bad,” She snaps. “Hold still for me or this is going to get fucking bloody. Brammie, he knows the rules.”

Never flinch. Never pull away. Never flinch away from Bram or Ashley. Never pull away

Don’t flinch don’t flinch don’t flinch

“S-sorry,” He gasps out, as her thumbnail digs hard into his hipbone, a subtle, small flash of pain. A reminder. “Sorry, I f-f-flinched, g-g-give me a sec, I just, give me a s-second-”

“Sshhhh, I’ll allow it this time,” Bram murmurs, loving and sweet. His head aches where Bram is holding him but his fingers are so twisted into the thick black hair that Nate can’t possibly hope to pull himself free. “Breathe, baby. Breathe. There you go. Take it slow... slow and deep.”

"That’s what Nate said,” Ashley says gleefully, and she laughs, the shattered-glass sound, a broken echo of her brother.

“I really regret letting you watch that show,” Bram says, but there’s humor in his voice. “You’ve never stopped doing that since.”

“Oh, like you let me do anything,” Ashley snorts. “I do what I want. Now hold your fucking Prince Charming still or I’m gonna cut the shit out of him.”

“Will you hold still for my Ashley, now, Nate? Please, baby? Be good for me.” Bram coos the words more than says them, and Nate manages a silent, terse nod, letting Bram bend his head back again.

“I-I’ll be good,” He whispers, barely moving his mouth, words for Bram alone. “I can b-be good for you."

Bram hums, low in his throat. “I love you so much, baby,” He whispers just as the straight razor touches Nate’s cheek again. This time he holds still, he’s as still as a statue, as still as the bloody Jesus in the church when he was a child and his grandparents were still alive. Still as the saints at their weekly mass. Still as the God who never answered his prayers when he made them, and who seemed horribly dead and blind to him now.

Nate holds himself as still as the grave that waited, somewhere, for Bram to get bored of him.

Ashley lets the weight of the razor do most of the work, a gentle shave he can really barely feel, the blade only just touching his skin enough to shave off the stubble he had been stubbornly growing. His breathing starts, slowly, to calm.

Both cheeks, across his chin, just above his upper lip. Her movements are quick and expert, gentle as a lamb. The blade isn’t a cut, it’s a kiss.

Down his neck, and he tenses again, but his body is tired of trying to throw adrenaline at the problem and it’s easier to keep still this time. He focuses on the pull of Bram’s fingers in his hair, on the cold arm across his chest, on the thumb still digging hard into his hip.

Being naked felt vulnerable. Baring his throat to a fucking animal wearing a woman’s face feels worse.

She lathers him up again, takes another pass with the razor, slower this time. Taking her sweet, sweet time. And the longer it goes on, the more his heartbeat slows, the stronger he feels. Not so bad. It’s not so bad. She’s not hurting him, beyond the bruise he thinks will be on his hip in the morning from the pressure of her thumb.

Bram won’t let her hurt him, as long as he’s good. As long as Bram still loves him, he will get to stay alive.

Have to be good.

Stay alive.

Finally she steps back to grab the washcloth, washing the remaining bits of lather off his face and the end of his nose, surveying her work. “What d’you think, Brammie?”

Bram lets go of his hair and Nate gasps in relief, letting his head fall back forward. The arm is removed from his chest and Bram slips off the edge of the tub and comes around in front of him, the siblings standing side by side.

So alike, and totally different.

They cross their arms in front of themselves, and Nate fights back a hint of hysterical laughter at the image, looking at them from beneath the sweep of his hair, his chin still slightly tucked. Bram sighs and leans down, taking him by the chin and lifting it hard so he’s forced to look up.

Nate closes his eyes immediately.

He wants to stay here, as long as he can, in this place where he has his own mind.

“I think you did a great job,” Bram says after turning his face side to side, looking him over. “Didn’t miss a spot. You’ve always been so good at this, haven’t you?”

“I like razors.” Ashley shrugs and turns back to the sink. “Something wickedly sharp, right up against the blood under the skin. What’s not to like? I need to clean all of this. Take your boy and go.” She turns to look back at them, and catches Nate’s eyes. Something mocking is in her smile. “I’ll give you an hour, I’m a generous woman and I’ve decided to take a bath. Then I want my goddamn steak.”

“An hour it is.” Bram drops into a crouch, undoing the ropes that tie Nate’s ankles to the chair legs with quick movements born from long experience. Nate could kick him in the face like this, he thinks, but it wouldn’t do him any good and he doesn’t dare.

When he pulls Nate to his feet, he stumbles a little, but there’s an arm around him and a kiss to his damp neck, and Nate tilts his head back for it, swallowing hard against the curl of disgust and something darker deep inside him.

“She did a god job,” Bram whispers into his jaw, and Nate shudders. “Thanks, Ash.”

“No problem. Ugh, you’re disgusting with him, Brammie.” Ashley waves a hand at them, rinsing the brush out under the hot water again. “Get him the fuck out of my bathroom and go fuck him blind already.”

“I'm on it, big sister.” Bram laughs, barking and high-pitched, and Nate closes his eyes against the flinch he has to force down inside of himself, with all the other true feelings he has to hide, layered on each other like corpses in a plague grave.

“B-Bram, my… my wrists, will you m-maybe take the, the cuffs off?” He asks it softly, keeping his voice low and maybe a little flirty, the way Bram likes. If he can just have control over one thing, just one small thing, it’s easier.

Bram pauses, then the arm around him tightens. “No, baby. I want them on.”

Nate lets out a breath and slowly nods, looking down at the ground as Bram leads him out of the room. He's stumbling a little on legs that had fallen asleep while he was in the chair, pinpricks and static straight up his ankles as his feet were forced back awake.

“You want this, baby, right?” He blinks in surprise at the question, looking up, realizing only too late that it was a trick. Bram smiles as their eyes meet, and after a second, Nate smiles back at him.

Screaming in the back of his mind, hoarse and deafening, furious and helpless.

“You b-bet I do,” Nate breathes out loud, low with the sudden push of desire inside of him, and when Bram tilts his chin up for the kiss Nate moves forward first, pressing his lips to Bram’s, warm life to cold death, and he lets the dead thing take him, lets Bram pull him down the hallway by one arm, smiles when he’s shoved onto his back on the bed, arching his spine to try and take some weight off the arms still forced behind him and cuffed together with leather.

It’s easier, to let it take him, to let the dark things pull him under.

Just an hour.

It’s only going to be an hour.

He can go away for an hour, and that won’t be so bad. Then he'll come back again.

Bram on top of him is ice pressing down on his lungs, seeping under his skin, infecting every blood cell. There's a knee on either side of his thighs, a cold hand sliding up over his ribcage on one side, and Bram's mouth licks up his neck, trails of wet he blows cool air over that lights a heat in him, an electricity under his skin. Nate shifts under the attention, squirms a little when fingernails scrape over sensitive spots, press lightly against yesterday’s and last week’s bruises.

“Mmmmn, smooth,” Bram whispers as he kisses his neck, nips at the skin, teeth grazing just deeply enough for a hint of pain. Nate breathes in, holds for five, breathes out. His heart beats hard against his chest, but there’s no fear left, and his heart pounds for a different reason entirely now.

“Such a close, smooth shave,” Bram murmurs into the line of Nate’s jaw, and Nate swallows hard, pressing his hips up into Bram’s until the pressure is a warm rush of pleasure that shatters his thoughts, gives Bram an invitation for more. He pretends that he can’t hear the screaming trapped in the back of his own mind.

He pretends he is smooth, and cold, and empty. He pretends he is just like them.

Just for an hour.

And then again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. It stretches out ahead of him, endless days of this. When Bram picks the knife up off the bedside table and slips it into the skin along his collarbone, cutting him apart as easily as silk, he hisses at the pain at the same moment Bram bites hard into his neck and the cold hand slides down his hips and finds him hardening under the attention.

"L-look at me," Nate manages to whisper, not quite begging. "J-just look at m-me, Bram, first, please. Before you... before there’s more."

Bram lifts his head - and the pain and pleasure mix in him. When the ice eyes meet his, he can't tell the two apart any longer, and his hips buck to meet the seeking hand, the cold fingers, to ask for more even as warm blood trickles down his shoulder to soak into the sheets.

"Y-yes," Nate breathes. "Just keep looking at me. J-just like th-that."

"I love you, baby," Bram says, so sweetly, and the new slice along his collarbone bleeds and aches and Bram's hand moves and he is lost, he is so fucking lost.

Nate moans softly and smiles up at him, dazed and foggy and gone somewhere far within his own mind. "I l-love you, too, honey," he says, low and hoarse, his voice heavy and slightly thick.

One day I'm going to get out of this.

I just don't know how or if I'll be alive when I do.

"Please," Nate whispers, his hands clenched into fists against the sheets, cuffed together behind his back, Bram's hips moving against his. "Please."

"What, baby?'

"Just please d-don't stop looking at m-m-me when you hurt me."

[ashintheairlikesnow]

BTHB: Forced to Watch

That’s right, it’s that time again! @muffinworry​ requested: @badthingshappenbingo​:  forced to watch with my girl ashley

As always: puppy stickers equals fulfilled, blood stains are requested

Tagging: @bleeding-demon-teeth, @spiffythespook, @finder-of-rings, @whumpywhumper​ @special-spicy-chicken​

CW: Stabbing, blood, referenced/implied noncon and abuse

“Ora, if you don’t start paying attention, this story is going to take a really long time to tell.” 

When Ora didn’t look up - a flash of the green hair on their head, dirty and clumped together by now, all they gave Ashley to look at -  Ashley sighed heavily, wondering why she put up with this. Sure, she didn’t know how to drive and Ora Collins at least appeared to have the car mostly under control (totally under control at the moment, as they were not even in the car, they were tied to a chair), but they were three days in and they should feel bonded by now.

Right? Shouldn’t they?

How long did it take Bram to start getting his boys to bond with him? Oh, but Bram had the eyes, and Ashley was never going to have the eyes. Not unless they met another like themselves and Bram helped her cut that one’s eyes out. 

“Ora. Come on, this place is a shithole and I do not have all day to walk you through this.” Ora sniffed, and Ashley paused while licking a bit of red off one fingernail. “What? What’s that noise for?”

Sometimes - if she was truly honest with herself - Ashley envied the other vampires. It would have been nice to live on blood, copper-salt-sweet and sparking with life in it. She could have been a great vampire like that. Instead, here she was, buzzing off the conflicting miseries of relief and hate and - strongest of all - fear that came from the poor little thing she carried along with her.

Well, and nice and full already from the meal currently slumped hard to one side and tied to a chair across the table from Ora.

“Ora, I am talking to you, and you remember the rules-”

“I’m sorry!” Ora jerked their head back up this time, meeting Ashley’s gaze with wide, frightened hazel eyes. Honestly, Ora’s eyes were their best feature, and Ashley never got tired of how they looked ringed in white from fear. “I’m s-sorry, Ashley, it’s just-... it’s just, it’s really h-h-hard to watch, to watch you...”

“What? To watch me cut him up?” Ashley blinked, looked at the man tied to the chair next to where she stood, then back to Ora. She gestured with the large chef’s knife she held in one hand, already smeared with the man’s blood. “He died like two hours ago, Ora, what’s the problem?”

“H-he… I kn, I know he’s d-dead, Ashley, but you k-keep cutting h-h-him…” Ora’s voice hiccupped, finally, into sobs and their head dropped once more as they began to cry, tears wetting little droplets onto the fabric of their jeans. They were still wearing the ones she had met them in, although Ashley had been nice enough to steal a bunch of different shirts and underwear somewhere in Iowa.

She was pretty sure they were in Nebraska now? It was flat and pointless, in any case, and Ashley had vague memories of the center of this stupid baby country being flat and pointless. Harder people lived out here, but fewer of them. 

No one like her could live long without a nice big population center to feed on, and Nebraska… Nebraska wasn’t it.

Ashley sighed and raked a hand back through her hair, frowning as she remembered she had a lot of blood on that hand. Oh, well. She’d have to shower before they left anyway. Brammie would take Ora into the shower with him, if he were here, start that whole mess back up, but Ashley valued her private time more than her Brammie ever had.

She missed her baby brother.

Baby by a few minutes, anyway.

But they’d find him soon enough in that prison in California, and then Ashley would set him free. It wasn’t fair to lock up something so beautifully wild as her brother. Do you blame a wolf for eating deer? Do you lock up a raccoon for digging through trash cans?

“Ora. I’m going to get rid of this whole…” She waved the knife around in a lazy circle, gesturing to the man who’d had the bad luck to piss Ashley off. “... mess. But I’m not going to do it until you have finished listening to me, and you have to look or the whole visual aid part of this just isn’t going to work.”

“B-But I don’t want to see the visual aid!” Ora wailed, and the sound of their sweet sad voice echoed off the walls. Ashley shivered, pleasantly, felt electricity light up her nerve endings and flood her veins. Moments like this were why Brammie kept Nate around, weren’t they? That little buzz in your fingertips, behind your eyes, the way Ashley felt like any moment now her hair might stand on end from the pure perfection of Ora Collins and their precious little fear.

“Ora. Darling. Light of my life, love of my heart. My absolute goddamn treasure.” Ashley leaned over, pointing the blade right at Ora’s little face. 

She watched their head slowly rise, eyes nearly crossing as they focused with new panic on the point of the knife so close to them. Ashley licked her lips, slowly, and tilted her head to take in more fully the sudden quick rise and fall of Ora’s chest under their baggy shirt. 

“Watch. The visual. Aid. Or I will cut your eyelids off so you can’t blink any longer. Am I understood?”

Ora’s throat moved in a sudden a swallow and they nodded quickly, hair falling into their face, and Ashley used the chef’s knife to gently - ever so gently - push it back to the side. She loved watching the wide hazel eyes following every movement.

“So. As I was saying. Brammie’s little boyfriend and I - he’d been living with us for three years by then, give or take - were alone in the house. Brammie still had to hunt, because he wasn’t doing enough to Nate to just, to just really eat him by then. It’s that whole nonsense thing about love, you know? We’ve been around for so, so long, and Brammie’s boys are a dime a dozen for forever and then we run into this pretty little prince of his and bam!” Ashley slammed her free hand down on the table and Ora jumped, letting out a scared little cry.

Ashley felt the reverberation of that cry right down her spine, like the lick of a lover’s tongue.

“Bam,” She repeated but gently this time. “He’s in love. He’s in love, Ora Collins, and you know what my Brammie and I don’t do?” Ora swallowed again - they swallow so much when they’re talking to Ashley, don’t they? - and ventured, in a trembling voice, “You, you don’t… fall in love?”

“Right. Absolutely right, Ora-who-I-adore-ah. We don’t fall in love. Why would we? Everyone dies in the end but us. What’s the goddamn point?” She sighed and rested her free hand on Ora’s shoulder, giving it a little reassuring squeeze, leaning over to look right at them. Ora stared back, their eyes shifting back and forth, as though trying to find some softness or give on Ashley’s.

There was none to find. 

Ashley knew her eyes were empty, reflection of light off the ice of a vast, lifeless lake. Bram had all the life in his. Ashley was nothing but walking death.

“So, anyway. Nate came to live with us - and at first we had to lock him in, and my Brammie… oh, the things my Brammie did to him.” Ashley breathed out, the happy memories flooding her system, and moved slowly away, circling the chair Ora was tied to, turning to look at the dead man on the other side of this small, sad little Formica table in some stupid shit town in stupid fucking Nebraska in this absolutely pointless fucking country.

“Wh-what things?” Ora asked, voice still shaky, but a little steadier now. “I r-read a little about the trial…”

“Hmmm, I doubt much of that came into play. Nate liked the things my Brammie did. You don’t talk about the parts you like in court, in my experience.” 

“Have you… eh-ever been to court?”

Ashley paused, tapping her chin with the blunt side of the knife. “I guess I haven’t. Well, unimportant to my story so shut your fucking face for five seconds while I set up the visual aid.”

Ora nodded, biting down on their lower lip. Ashley watched them stretch their wrists against the strength of the rope and find just enough give to add a little comfort, not enough to escape. Ashley was being nice to Ora, but she wasn’t going to be that nice… or that stupid.

Brammie had been stupid, once. 

Ashley would never be dumb enough to give another body the chance.

“So. In any case, after three years, you know, we were pretty used to each other.” Ashley started walking again, looking down to watch her own toes spread out against the dingy tile floor, yellowed with time. She stopped behind the man’s body, grabbing it by the short black hair on its head and yanking back, lifting the empty horrified green eyes to stare right at Ora. “We had our routine. Nate did all the cooking and cleaning like the good little housewife Brammie kept him to be, they fucked a lot-”

Ora winced.

“Oh, what, you’ve never fucked someone? What about Penny? I mean, it seemed like you did-”

“N-no, it’s just… it’s not that, Ashley, I swear, it’s just-” Ora’s gaze went to the fridge - wide open with only a jug of expired milk and a half-empty box of baking soda inside - and then it danced everywhere but at Ashley. “Can you not make me look at his, um, his eyes?”

“Oh, this is the problem? Yeah, sure.” Ashley dropped the head and it flopped hard back down, chin on its chest. “Sorry about that.”

“Th-thank you, Ashley,” Ora whispered. Oh, they learned the rules fast, and they learned them well. Ashley might actually regret killing Ora once they made it to her destination.

“Anyway. My story. So we had a good thing going, the three of us. Nate was a dartboard, he was a footstool for me one time, I cut the shit out of him, he and Brammie had some weird fucked up sex thing going… it was just a really good life, trust me. Then… then Brammie goes out hunting one day because he couldn’t hurt Nate anymore, he was in love the absolute dumbass, and while he was out…”

Ashley sighed, resting one arm on the shoulder of the corpse, looking down at it a little fondly. “While Brammie was out hunting, Nate picked up a knife. I didn’t expect it anymore. I thought… I was an idiot. He fooled us both, that son of a bitch. He shouldn’t have been able to but he did. He was cooking for me, and I came in to check on the progress, and…” Ashley’s grip tightened on the handle of the chef’s knife.

“And… and what?” Ora looked up slowly, nervously.

Ashley smiled, and there was blood smeared on her teeth. “Then he fucking stabbed me to death, Ora.” 

Her arm moved with inhuman speed to jam the blade right through the corpse’s chest, and Ora let out a startled breathy scream, jerking at their restraints. “Like this. And this. And fucking this. Get your fucking eyes back on me!” Ora started to cry, again, tears racing down their face on either side like gorgeous little raindrops, and Ashley laughed, a high-pitched half-shattered sound, at the sight. 

Ashley kept stabbing, making new wounds in a dead body over and over and over again, checking to see if Ora was looking, and they were, they were. The horror and disgust, the way Ora’s face went white and then green, it all fed Ashley, settled deep inside her bones and she felt the most ancient parts of her shift in happiness, in every single second being exactly what she was made to be.

She counted up the wounds - she thought maybe 37, it was hard to remember when you were being fucking stabbed to death by your brother’s boyfriend - and when she was done the knife clattered back to the ground, and Ashley stood, breathing hard, a snarl pulling lips back from her pinkish-stained teeth. “He killed me, Ora. Brammie’s little boyfriend killed me. Then he got up, and he left while I was still choking on my own fucking blood, and when I woke up it was five years later and you and your little asshole girlfriend were in my fucking house and my brother’s in fucking prison!”

Ora cringed back into their seat, into the restraints, trying to choke back their sobs and failing, failing miserably, failing beautifully. The sound of their tears bounced off the walls in this dirty little kitchen and everything seemed, in that moment, just a little bit brighter.

Pl-please,” Ora half-whispered, trembling and beautiful. “Please don’t, don’t do th-th-this anymore, please…”

Ashley sighed, nudging the corpse with her foot. Blood leaked from wounds as an afterthought, the motherfucker was too dead to be worth much of a show. Ashley looked down at her own hands, ran them over her chest and torso, reminding herself that her wounds were gone. They had healed, while she waited to come back. 

They had healed.

She was healed.

And she had a fucking job to do.

“That was the end of the visual aid, Ora. But my point is, Nate Vandrum is a piece of shit who didn’t know how good he had it, he murdered me, and I would very much like to find his dumb ass and murder him right back. But I have a feeling my brother won’t let me. So you - and I - are going to do the next best thing.”

“We… w-we are?” Ora raised their head one more, and Ashley moved to them swiftly, leaning over to take that softly rounded little chin in her hand. They did not flinch or pull away from her touch - they knew so many rules now, they were such a good little friend. “What’s the next best th-thing, Ashley?”

“Please,” Ashley said gently, lovingly, petting at Ora’s face, leaving little red stripes there that would dry and turn brown and flake away. “Please call me Ash, Ora, we’re friends now, aren’t we?”

“R-Right. F-F-Friends, Ash.” Ora nodded quickly, swallowing hard again. “We’re friends, right. Wh, whatever you say, is, is right.”

“That’s my… well. That’s my little Ora. See, this is why you got to be the one that lived. Lucky, lucky little thing.” Ashley kissed them once on each cheek, then petted one hand gently through Ora’s hair. After holding themselves stiffly still, Ashley felt Ora slowly force themselves to relax, and smiled with delight when Ora pushed their head a little harder into the touch of Ashley’s hand.

“Oh, you’re so good,” Ashley murmured, nearly purred the words, and Ora let out a shaking, audible breath of relief. “You’re such a good Oracle. We’re going to find my brother, we’ll let him out, and he will lead us to Nate Vandrum and that redheaded mop he tried to kill him for.”

“And, and then we’ll k-k-kill them?” Ora asked, keeping their voice low, whispering right back to her. “Then they’ll d-d-die?”

“Hm.” Ashley cradled Ora’s head in her hands for a moment longer, then let go and stood, stretching her arms high over her head, until the knobs of her spine cracked, until she felt the stretch of every single muscle in her body.

You should never take those living muscles for granted, after all. They could die any day, and not everyone would die with the coins to pay their debt.

“I d-d-don’t want to help you kill anyone,” Ora said, low and pleading. “I don’t want to be a murderer, Ash.”

“Don’t worry, darling, you won’t.” Ashley smiled. 

“B-but… you’re going to kill them?”

Ashley kicked the bloody knife until it banged hard into a wall across the little room. “Probably not.” Ora looked up, hope in their pretty hazel eyes, and Ashley licked her lips against how it was about to feel when she drained all that hope away. “They tried to kill my brother, after all. Killing them is going to be his job. But you and I… well. Have you ever heard about how the people who lived here before the colonists fucked it all up used to trap buffalo?”

Ora blinked, and slowly shook their head. Hair fell back over their eyes, but this time Ashley left it there. “N-No, Ash, I haven’t.”

“They would find the buffalo, and set up a trap. And a few would wave blankets and shout and maybe shoot an arrow or two, but the buffalo would stampede away from what they saw at the threat and run right into the trap. They’d get caught there, milling around, and then they just waited to die. So we’re going to set my brother free. We’re going to find his pretty little buffalo roaming the open range.” Ashley slid her hands into the back pockets of her own jeans, licking a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth. “Then you and I are going to wave some blankets and yell.”

“And… and y-y-your brother does the, um, the killing?” Ora’s voice was low, but after a second they nodded, thoughtfully. “I can… I can do that. If I don’t d-d-do the killing, Ash, I can, I can do that.”

“Wonderful. I knew I liked you for a reason. Now stay here and watch over our little buddy while I go take a shower. Once I’m clean, you can have yours and we’ll see if we can’t find you some fucking sweatpants or something in this house.” Ashley paused, then clapped her hands together in sudden delight. “I’m pretty sure I saw a KFC when we came in through town, let’s have fried chicken for dinner!”

Ora stared at the dead man who had once owned this house, and who had made the mistake of catcalling Ashley and calling Ora some kind of slur while they were getting gas. He was a dick to Ashley, and now he was dead.

To Ashley, it all made absolutely perfect sense.

Finally, Ora said softly, “Fried, um, fried chicken sounds pretty g-g-good…”

“And what do we say when someone offers to give us a gift, Oracle Collins?”

Ora smiled up at her - it was watery, and frightened, but it was a smile. “We s-s-say thank you, Ash. Thank you for offering to get me fried chicken for dinner.”

“You’re so welcome, love.” Ashley ruffled Ora’s pretty green hair and then turned to walk away. As she stomped up the stairs, she called out, “I’ll buy you some new hair dye, too, let’s get you all bright and fun again before we head west tomorrow!”

Oracle Collins, wearing week-old dirty jeans and tied down to a chair three feet from a corpse still leaking blood from too many stab wounds to count, let their eyes go slowly unfocused so they wouldn’t have to see anything at all any longer.

Somewhere nearby a police siren started up, but Ora didn’t raise their head. 

They knew those sirens weren’t coming to help.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Bad Things Happen Bingo: Nightmares (Nate/Danny)

I ended up having a sick day from work today, so I had time to write up the second of these... after this I’m going to need some time before the next! But it’s coming, I promise!

For @badthingshappenbingo​, @my-whumpy-little-heart​ requested: For BTHB, could you do nightmares with Danny and/or Nate? It would be interesting if they were still with Abraham, but you can do whatever you want with the prompt. Thank you :) 

That ended up being… a hell of a prompt. I actually got a second request for nightmares with Ryan, so I’m going to do that one twice! It will get a second sticker. (Chronology: within the first year of captivity, but I’m not sure exactly where in that timeline)

Requested: blood stain Completed: puppy sticker

Tagging: @bleeding-demon-teeth​, @spiffythespook​, @special-spicy-chicken​

CW: Implied/referenced/pretty obviously noncon, noncon touching, noncon kissing, referenced evidence of violence/torture. NSFW implications, although nothing outright, as always. As always, keep in mind that Abraham Denner is a bad, bad man. Well, not man… he’s a bad something.

“Psssst. Wake up.”

Nate’s used to this, so when he feels the fingertips, cold as ice, against his forehead, softly brushing the black hair back and away, he doesn’t even tense up. He floats back to wakefulness slowly, trying to cling on to the dream he’d been having. 

It had been a warm and hazy thing, one of those bizarre dreams that means nothing but neurons firing at random inside the brain, the dreams he liked because they were so much better than all the ones about the living hell he’d never been able to fully escape.

He’d been dreaming about the doorbell ringing. The cabin doesn’t have a doorbell, but it doesn’t really matter, it rang anyway. Bram sent him to answer it, and when he opened the door he discovered fifteen cats in a trench coat and black film noir detective’s hat waiting when it opened. 

Can I help you? He’d asked, baffled not so much by the sight of fifteen cats in a trench coat or even that they had somehow managed to find them this deep into the woods, but mostly by the fact that they were coming by so late at night.

Fifteen pairs of night-reflective eyes had turned to look at him all at once, and he’d heard Danny behind him shout, let them in, Nate, let them in!

He’d stepped back and opened the door wider, gesturing inside in that foggy ghost way you sometimes do things in dreams. As soon as he did, they simply collapsed back down into cats, leaving the trenchcoat and hat in a cartoon puddle on the doorstep and racing through the cabin.

They climbed onto the fireplace, knocked books off the shelves, meowed happily and loudly, scratched up Bram’s couch and pulled threads from the woven-rag rug.

A brightly-colored calico, vibrant with red and brown and black and white, settled herself into Danny’s lap where he sat on the floor looking around at the chaos with delight. Do you think the cats could save us? Danny asked him, smiling, as the whip-skinny calico had put her paws on his shoulder, licked a rough tongue up the side of Danny’s face, batted at his hair. Do the cats know the way out?

Nate had jumped when he realized one of them had climbed straight up him and settled around his shoulders without him realizing, a black cat with cold blue eyes that swiped gently at his hair. Baby, wake up, you have to see this, the black cat purred, rough in his ear, in Bram’s sleep-slurred, loving voice.

“Nate. Wake up, sweetheart.” The voice is low, and soft, a breath of cold air against his ear, and he shivers a little, pleasantly, at the feeling. 

“Mmmmn, is Ashley up already?” He asks, and he doesn’t know why - she’s dead, she’s been dead for a year now at least, why is he asking that? But for a half-second, with Bram’s voice in his ear, he forgets.

There’s a hesitation, and then Bram says softly, sadly, “Not yet. That takes time. But look, Nate, look at him.”

He opens his eyes... and looks right into Danny’s face, baffled for a second before he remembers that Danny had slept in the bed last night.

Danny had cooked Bram’s favorite dinner without being asked, had remembered all the rules all day without even one slipup, had made their drinks with dinner perfectly and faster than ever before, served their food and waited to be given permission to get his own, waited for Bram to tell him if he could use fork and spoon to eat with without having to be reminded.

He’d even dropped to the floor to eat sitting right next to Bram’s chair like he wanted him to, with Bram’s hand petting through his hair, Danny’s eyes on the ground and the red flush of humiliation in his face. 

He’s been so good today, baby, and the King always says you have to include positive reinforcement, too. Do you not think he’s earned some positive reinforcement? 

Th-that’s not what I m-m-meant-

No, that’s definitely what you’re saying, that you think he shouldn’t be given good things when he’s good, Nate. That seems mean, don’t you think? Cruel to make me hurt him when he’s been so good.

I’m n-not telling y-y-you to hurt him, I’m s-s-saying leave him al, alone!

No, our pups has two choices tonight: get his reward or I’ll open all the wounds from last time up on his back again. I’ll let you choose.

Bram, pl-please-

I said choose, baby.

… the r-reward.

While Nate doesn’t particularly want to think about last night ever the fuck again (and neither, he is certain, does Danny), he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret seeing Danny actually warm for once, this morning.

He’s curled up in the center of the bed under the layers of heavy blankets, rather than the thin and threadbare things he’s normally allowed on his little mat in the living room. If it hadn’t been for the wrists bound together above his head, nearly palm-to-palm, and tied hard to the headboard, he might have even looked comfortable.

Bram had been on the other side of Danny when they fell asleep but that side of the bed was empty, now. Instead, Bram was behind him - the cold at his back where he leaned over from where he stood, fingers curled just slightly to shift back his hair, gentle and loving. Nate felt himself split like he always did into two people - the version of him that wanted to snarl and push the hand away, and the version of him that wanted to melt into the touch.

He settled for somewhere in the middle and just whispered, without really moving at all, “Is it m-morning already, Bram?”

Sometimes he stammers less when he first wakes up, when his voice is still mostly the voice from his dreams, where he never stammers at all. His dreams never seemed to catch up with whatever had happened to the connection between his brain and his mouth.

“No, baby, it’s like four.. But look at Red.” Bram’s fingers slide down, slide along his cheekbone to his jaw, take hold of his chin, tilting it up a little bit. Nate can feel the bed shift, as Bram leans his weight on it by one knee, the pressure of it along his back. 

“B-Bram, I-”

“I said look. Our little puppy is dreaming.”

Nate blinks the last of the sleep from his eyes, the final hints of the cabin full of cats, the calico climbing up on Danny’s shoulder to look at him with the same bright hopefulness Danny wore, sometimes, before the darkness took it over again. 

Bram settles down behind him, his cold breath on the back of Nate’s neck as the two of them look over at Danny.

Nate hadn’t really noticed it at first - he’d still been too lost in trying to find his way to consciousness, honestly - but Danny’s eyebrows are furrowed together beneath the healing bruise on the side of his forehead, and his already-rubbed-raw wrists jerk a little at the ropes, fingers twitching like he’s trying to grab at something. Nate watches his mouth moving, breaths of air that weren’t quite sentences escaping in occasional snatches of words Nate can almost, almost hear if he listens hard enough, the healing cut on his lip.

The red marks around his neck from the last round of barbed-wire are nearly faded completely, but underneath the thin sleep shirt Nate knows there are more bruises, more cuts. Danny’s back is still bandaged from the drinks incident, and Nate couldn’t forget the way he’d screamed when Bram punished him for that moment of rebellion, couldn’t ever forget the look on his face.

The top part of the bandage, the adhesive holding the giant swaths of gauze over it, is sticking up out of the neck of his shirt, nearly up to his hairline. 

Danny whimpers, softly, in his sleep, and Nate winces at the sound. It’s too much like the dog Bram keeps insisting he is now.

“I think he’s having a nightmare,” Bram breathes with unabashed delight into Nate’s ear, rubbing at his shoulder with one hand in excitement. “Like a midnight snack to feel all that coming off of him. I wish you were already like us, so you could feel this, this is so… does anyone still say ‘jacked’? Or is that out of style now?”

“H-how would I know?” Nate mutters. “I didn’t know what people said before all of this.”

“I guess you wouldn’t. Still... I wish I could read thoughts, I’d love to know what he’s seeing in that head of his…”

“I al-always kind of th-th-thought you c-could read minds,” Nate whispers back, keeping himself still and relaxed under Bram’s touch, refusing to react one way or the other to the hand that runs back down his arm and curves over one hip through the blankets, rests there, like a block of ice that won’t melt holding his body down. 

Danny’s little breaths are faster, now, his eyes moving rapidly under his closed eyelids, Nate struck again by the odd copper-bright eyelashes he’d never really seen on anyone else before, how pretty they are. He jerks a little harder at the ropes, whispers something, and Nate feels Bram leaning even closer from behind him, sees the sweep of white-blonde hair from the corner of his eyes.

If he doesn’t look, doesn’t see the cold ice-blue, he won’t fall in, and he can hold onto the hatred that he feels, hold on to wishing he was somewhere else. Hold on to his sense that someday, someway, he is going to get himself and Danny out of this.

I got myself out once, I can do it again.

Can’t I?

“No, baby, I can’t get into anyone’s head unless I do it the old-fashioned way, like I got into yours.” Bram’s fingers dance up the side of Nate’s head, over his ear, ‘walking’ over his hair, and Nate grinds his teeth together and keeps his eyes firmly fixed forward.

“St-... stop,” Danny whispers in his sleep. Bram chuckles behind Nate and he’s trapped - he’s stuck between Bram’s happiness and Danny’s unconscious misery and he can’t get out of this moment. All he can do is lay still, wait for Bram to move, wait to see if Danny wakes himself up. “D-don’t, st… b’good… be…”

“Oh, he’s dreaming about me, fuck yes.” Nate can hear the smile in Bram’s voice as he presses an excited kiss to the back of Nate’s neck, then pushes himself back up to get a better look. “I love when they dream about me.”

“Wh-who’s ‘they’?” Nate blinks, twisting back to look up at him without thinking. Bram looks back down and their eyes meet. Nate smiles, a little, at the man he loves and hates and cannot resist, and Bram smiles back.

“All of them,” Bram answers, as though that says all he needs to say. “All my boys.” 

How many boys are there inside your head? Nate wants to ask. How many people like us have you destroyed? Also, do you actually understand that I am a grown man? 

Somewhere in him, there is still a man who can think, I wish someone would bury a knife if your goddamn heart and I wish it could be me.

Stronger than that man, though, is the one who thinks, I love you.

“Stop… st, stop, ‘braham, I c’n, I’ll be good, want to be good, I… pl-... I, I don’t... stop… stop!” Danny’s whole body shudders all at once and his eyes fly open, wide open without quite being fully awake, unseeing. He pulls hard at the ropes and hisses in pain as they only tighten even more, dig in deeper. Nate sees the first smear of red just below one of his palms. “Oh god, I just, I… where-...” 

“What did I do to you, Red?” Bram asks, in a low voice nearly thick with an awful happiness. He looks like wolves covered in blood on nature shows, licking their chops after eating a kill. 

Danny looks slowly up where Bram looms over he and Nate, Danny’s warm blue eyes dark with Bram’s shadow as he tries to shrink back, stopped by the ropes, kept right where he is in the center of the bed. “I… I don’t… Abraham? N-Nate, why am I…”

“Don’t you remember yesterday, little Red? You were so good for me and we gave you your reward?”

Danny swallows, hard, and then slowly nods, his fingers wrapping around the ropes like he can find some comfort in holding onto them. “Y-Yeah. Yeah, I remember… I remember now.” His face turns bright red, nearly fading the scars out completely, all the way red to the end of his nose with embarrassment, with shame. “Ah, um… thank you for my re-reward-” His voice cracks a little on the word, barely forcing it out, and Nate has to keep his eyes open until they burn to avoid seeing behind his eyelids what Danny’s reward had been. “-and letting me sleep, Abraham… I’m s-sorry, I woke up, I woke you up… I’m sorry, can I go back to my mat now?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Bram laughs, sliding back and off the bed, giving Nate a few precious seconds of space and the ability to breathe and warm air at his back, before he gets back in on the other side, sitting on the bed with his legs crossed, looking avidly down at Danny like a child on the library floor at storytime. “Oh, no no no no. Nate, baby, go make us some coffee.”

Danny gives Nate a pleading please don’t leave me here look, then turns back to Bram, searching his face for any sign of gentleness, finding none - just that terrible good cheer. “Coffee’s my j-job, if you just, if you just untie me, I can go make, um, make the coffee, Bram-”

“No, puppy. Nate will make the coffee today. Do what you’re told, baby, I gave you an order.”

“Y-Yes, Bram,” Nate says, standing up himself, guilty as he all but flees the room with Danny’s eyes burning into his back… but not guilty enough to go back in before the coffee’s good and ready.

Yesterday he found something in the back of the closet and had an idea, but he doesn’t have enough courage yet to use it, and he doesn’t know how much time there is left before Bram is done with Danny, before he wants to find someone new to break. 

He can’t kill him. I can’t lose him, I can’t lose Danny, I can’t. 

Do you want to save him, Nate, or do you just want to have him instead?

Does it matter which, if I would never ever hurt him?

As he steps into the living room and heads for the kitchen, he hears Bram’s voice behind him, the slippery-smooth snake charmer voice, soft and vaguely hypnotic.

“I want you to tell me all about that dream you were just having… because I want to make sure we recreate it in the most excruciatingly accurate detail. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll just have to come up with something fun to do to you all on my own, hm?”

Nate hears the rattle of Danny’s ankle chain as he tries to move again. “I don’t, um, I don’t want to…”

“Since when have I given a single flying fuck about what you wanted, puppy? I told you to tell me about your dream. If you won’t - or if you try to lie, you know I can always tell when you’re lying - we’ll just have to see if maybe some time down in the dark will help convince you.”

“N-no! No, I don’t need, um, I don’t need the cellar. I swear I don’t. I’ll be good, I’ll try harder, Abraham, I want to be good for you!”

“Then prove it.”

“Just, um. Give me a sec. Will you - will you please untie my hands, then I can, I can tell you…”

There’s a silence as Nate pulls down the coffee beans and the little electric grinder Danny asked Bram to pick up on his last supply run (whole bean coffee is, um, it’s better, Abraham, this would let me make better coffee for, for you - can I please make better coffee for you, Abraham? please?) , the pressure like the air just before a storm.

“... you’ve got a deal, little Red.” There’s a pause, far longer than the time needed simply to untie the knots, long enough that Nate feels bile rising in his throat at the thought of what might be going on behind him. Finally, he hears Bram laughing, the high-pitched hyena bark he only makes when he’s truly, genuinely happy. “Oh, you’re good at that now, huh? Who says I’m not nice to you when I want to be, hm? Now what do we say when someone does us a favor?”

Danny’s voice, when he speaks, is low and soft, nervous and eager-to-please. “Th-thank you for untying me, Abraham. I can… I can tell you the dream now.”

“Don’t try to lie, puppy, you’re the worst fucking liar I’ve ever met.”

“I… I know, Abraham. I won’t. I was just-... I did something bad, so you said, you said I had to learn my lesson...”

The defeat and fear, the submission in Danny’s voice is too much. He can’t take it. He can’t, or he’s going to start screaming and never fucking stop. This is his fault, for meeting Danny, for talking to him when he caught the younger man looking at him, for agreeing to see a movie together. This is his fault for thinking he’d gotten away, that maybe Bram would let him be, think he was too much trouble to go after.

He’d made a mistake, leaving Bram, and Danny is suffering for it.

And he’s about to suffer more.

“What lesson am I going to teach you today, Red? What did you forget in your pretty little head while you slept?”

“I-I… um, I, I-” Danny’s voice cuts off, and there’s another pause that lasts too long, that Nate knows too well from long experience. His skin crawls, but it’s his fault, isn’t it, that Danny knows the rules? “-forgot the rule not to pull away from you…”

Bram begins to laugh again. “Oh, that’s my favorite rule… What do we say when we break a rule, Red?”

“You say you’re sorry and then you get hurt so you don’t break the rule again,” Danny says all at once, memorized, pushing the words out so quickly they’re barely even separated sounds. “I, I know, Abraham, but it was just a dream-”

“Breaking rules still counts in dreams, little one. Come here and let’s talk about how you can fix that mistake you made in your sleep so you won’t even dream about breaking my rules again…”

 Nate jams the coffee grinder on and tells himself he’s not complicit if he can’t hear a thing over the sound.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Bad Things Happen Bingo: Worked Themselves to Exhaustion

Heeeey, @badthingshappenbingo​ is finally underway! @burtlederp​ asked for Worked Themselves to Exhaustion with Ryan as our POV/Main, so here it is! 

Bloodstains = requested, puppy sticker = completed

This is set post-rescue and post-trial. Tagging the crew: @spiffythespook​, @bleeding-demon-teeth​, and @special-spicy-chicken​!

CW: Very little, actually! Some references to parental abuse and implied/references past assault/violence, but mostly this is just Ryan being Ryan

Ryan woke up with a start to discover he’d fallen asleep sitting at the kitchen table, forehead resting on one arm and the other simply hanging loose down at his side.

He still had the mug of coffee he’d been drinking sitting next to him, his fingers loosely curved around the handle. He dragged his free hand up and over to find the ceramic had totally cooled, the coffee no doubt cold and stale inside.

He blinked, lifting his head slowly, wincing at the crick of pain in his neck. What time was it? How long had he been asleep? His phone was buzzing on the table next to him and he blinked, blearily looking over at it. Must've been what woke him. Fuck, was it really 9:45 already?

When he saw ‘MOM’ and the photo he’d set of he and Corrine at the beach a couple of years ago lighting up the screen, he groaned, hit the button to silence it, and let his head drop back to the table.

He was so fucking tired and he did not have the energy to deal with his mother right now. Maybe not ever again, not where Danny was concerned.

She would tell him to get an aide, she was always telling him to get an aide. Move out (you can move right back in the house with Dad and I until you find a place, no reason to linger there wasting your twenties), leave him and Vandrum with a full-time home health care aide.

You shouldn’t feel obligated to take care of him, Ryan.

But he did, and maybe if Mom had ever felt obligated to really care about Danny, he wouldn’t have ended up wearing a goddamn dog collar in western Canada.

Not that it was Canada’s fault, or anything. Ryan hadn’t ever realized how fucking huge Canada was, before he’d flown into Edmonton on the fastest flight he could find, rented a car, and then drove and drove and drove and fucking drove to the police station his brother was waiting in - only to realize it had been more hours upon hours of driving for Nate to get Danny there in the first place.

That cabin in the woods had been literally in the middle of fucking nowhere, and Ryan couldn’t possibly have known, right?

He should have, though. He should have, and maybe none of it would ever have happened if his mother and father hadn’t said all that shit to Danny five years ago about regretting adopting someone who didn’t want to be part of the family business, and therefore part of the family.

They might not see their obligations, but Ryan did. He was obligated, because while Danny had been up in those woods suffering, learning to believe that Denner fucker's lies that he isn't a person, that his body belongs to Denner to use however he wants, learning to call himself a puppy and give up his name and his body and his humanity to stay alive, Ryan had been looking in all the wrong places trying to find him.

He had looked for four straight years. He'd started looking the day Danny didn’t come home from his weird meetup with the older guy he was either just crushing hard on or actually dating, no one seemed to know, and he'd kept looking until the day the cops called and said We’ll know for sure once we’ve done the DNA test, Mr. Michaelson, but we’re pretty sure this man is your brother. He had never, ever stopped looking.

He had leveraged his parents’ wealth and influence to pull together private searches long after law enforcement had given up. He had kept looking even when the cops and the FBI stopped helping them find a living man and started focusing on recovering a corpse one day, maybe decades from now, when some dumbass hiker might trip over his brother’s bones in the woods-

Stop it. He survived. You brought him home. You couldn't have known where Denner would take him. You couldn't have done more.

Yes, he could have.

He had been looking, but he hadn’t looked hard enough. He'd looked in the wrong spots, he had missed clues, somewhere, somehow.  What if there had been a white hair in the bloodied car they missed? What if Denner had left a fingerprint on Vandrum's apartment building? What if what if what if.

What if none of it would ever have changed a thing?

No, his mother didn't understand, but he couldn’t ever give enough of himself to Danny's recovery to make up for what he had lost, for what he was still losing. For time suffered and time spent trying to heal.

His mother’s photo blinked away and the phone went back to empty black. Ryan sighed in relief… only to watch it light right back up as she tried a second time.

“No, fucking no,” He groaned, fighting the child’s urge to answer just because it was her, because he loved her, because she loved him. Him, but not his brother. The eternal hidden truth of the Michaelson family - one child loved, the other left out, chased off, and lost. "Leave a goddamn voicemail, Mom, come on."

He'd been up all night, for the third night in a row, and Ryan was tapped the fuck out.

One super fun discovery Ryan had made about bringing home two people who had lived in nonstop fight-or-flight-or-freeze mode for four years was that they never stop getting sick.

Danny's immune system had apparently just checked out at some point and left, and Ryan could usually handle it, but this virus or whatever it was... was bad.

Vandrum usually did his best to help, but he had caught the bug, too, this time. Which meant two grown men reduced to middle-of-the-night coughing fits and all-day fevers, two grown men essentially helpless, two grown men Ryan had found himself in charge of.

Ryan wasn't only taking care of his traumatized older brother who refused to let him touch him, even just to check to see if his fever had broken, but also his brother’s equally traumatized maybe-boyfriend who never flinched or pulled away but who instead stared at Ryan with glassy, frightened green eyes and gritted teeth as he simply put up with Ryan’s clumsy attempts at caretaking in silence, only breaking it with the occasional pl-please let Red sl-sleep, he can’t d-d-do chores today, I’ll d-do his chores f-for him, please...

One more day of this and Ryan might crack.

He's stocked the fridge with all the stuff he remembered Mom buying when they were sick as kids - ginger ale and Pedialyte (did adults drink that shit? Vandrum and Danny hadn't put up a fight when he brought it to them and God knew they weren't keeping any food down yet), chicken soup from the deli in little microwave-safe containers, some Gatorade. There were saltines open on the counter, from the only experiment with solid food either man had attempted since they first got sick.

Ryan had never seen someone throw up saltines before, but at least Vandrum had seemed decently ashamed of himself for it. Danny hadn't even tried them.

It's 9:45 in the morning and all Ryan wants to do is crawl back into his own bed and drift, but if he does he knows one of them will need him, and the only thing worse than not sleeping is finally, finally getting to sleep only to be almost immediately woken up by grown men so knocked out by some kind of virus that they could hardly stand on their own.

Ryan slowly sits up straight, feeling pops along his spine from having been slumped over the table for so long, wondering if twenty-four was too young to have his fucking bones crack when he moves, like an old man.

“One hour,” He says out loud, to no one in particular. “If they don’t need anything in the next hour, I’m giving up and going to fucking bed.”

He pours himself a fresh cup of coffee, which does absolutely nothing to alleviate his exhaustion. He listens to the voicemail his mother eventually leaves, after her third and fourth attempts go unanswered.

Here’s to hoping you’re sleeping, Ryan, and don’t worry, I was just wondering how you were doing and if you had any updates on how Danny and his, um, friend are doing. I can have Mrs. Verona over there to give you a break, poor dear, just say the word.

I was sleeping, Mom, Ryan thinks bitterly, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of one hand as he listens, ignoring for the moment that technically he had fallen asleep sitting at the table like a parent with a newborn and not an adult with a sick brother. Your fucking phone calls woke me up, congratulations, Corrine Michaelson, you’re a gold-star mom today.

No, that wasn’t fair. She was just worried, Mom knew he wasn’t sleeping enough since Danny came home. She was just trying to help, with the offers of an aide or of sending Mrs. Verona over for a day. 

She wasn’t trying to chase Danny off again, she wasn’t trying to make him feel like less-than even when he’d only just really started to get his feet under himself again. She just wanted to help Ryan, like always, and was so blinded by it that she missed that what helped Ryan sometimes hurt Danny.

She’d never meant to be awful to Danny, really, it had always just… happened.

Why do you always make excuses for her? Why don’t you just admit it, give it a name, and try to protect him from them while he’s still so fragile and so easily torn apart all over again? He needs someone who can stand up for him this time, and you never have, you always, always let them blame him. You let him run to Eureka to get away from them, so he was in this stupid town when that fucking psychopath came calling to pick his ex up again.

You let them chase Danny away, and it’s your fault he was here when Abraham Denner wanted a new victim. It’s your fault, Ryan, and you have to fix it, so stop whining to yourself about being tired and take care of the brother you couldn’t save when it counted.

You can start by calling what Mom and Dad do to Danny what it is, by calling it-

“Ryan?”

He’d been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t heard anyone coming, but he looks up now to see Danny leaning against the open-framed doorway to the kitchen, staring in at him with stark surprise written across his face.

The wavy red hair is sticking to his forehead and the back of his neck and his blue eyes are fever-bright, two bright red splotches mark his cheeks. His face is otherwise chalk-white, freckles and the ring of half-healed scarring standing out in garish, nearly neon red in a perfect outline of that fucking thing Ryan can barely stand to think about.

“What’re you doing up? You look dead on your feet, man.” Ryan stands up, slowly so he doesn’t surprise him - Danny still doesn’t like it when people move too fast around him, and the fever definitely doesn’t help with that problem - and sets his coffee mug on the table. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“I’m not s’posed to, to be in th’ bed.” Danny glances over his shoulder, then back, putting a finger to his lips. “Ssshhh. He must’ve… told Nate it was okay...” Danny’s eyes drift, aimlessly, to the side, looking with confusion at the window above the kitchen sink, with the faded, ancient little pleated floral curtain that had been in the apartment when Danny moved in.  “That’s not right. What d’you think he did to earn me getting to sleep in the bed?”

Something in Ryan cracks a little more, the way it always does every single time Danny says something else like this, some new piece of heart-deep horror that Danny doesn’t even seem to recognize for what it is.

“I don’t suppose it would help to tell you you’re home,” Ryan says, wearily, thinking longingly about the last few swallows of hot coffee left and whether it’s worth drinking it if it’s not going to even touch the fatigue. “Would it?”

“I wish I could go home.” Danny speaks the words so softly Ryan nearly misses them. “I wish, but there isn’t one anymore. I know all the rules. I’m so fucking tired, Ryan. Are you still looking for me?”

“Danny?” He’s so exhausted that it takes too long, far too long, for it to really sink in that Danny isn’t talking to him at all, but to some memory he’s having, that Danny’s lost in the woods again.

“I wish I got to keep my name.” Danny whimpers the words more than speaks and then slides straight to the floor in one swift motion. Ryan can’t cross the distance in time to stop him and Danny thumps to the ground nearly bonelessly, still braced against the door frame, closing his eyes slowly and resting the side of his head against it. “You have to look in the woods, Ryan. We’re in the woods.”

When Ryan crouches in front of him, reaching out one hand, he doesn’t flinch or pull away, not when Ryan’s palm presses against his sweaty, boiling-hot forehead, not when he feels the rabbit-fast flutter of his pulse in the side of his neck. 

“Whatever you want,” Danny mumbles, eyes half-opening, then closing again. “Do whatever you want. I’ll be good.”

He’s going to have to stand Danny up, and he can barely find the energy to straighten his legs for himself. Three days - three days of the fevers that come and go, the coughing that wakes him up when he does sleep, his mother’s worried phone calls, Vandrum being fucking useless because he’s sick, too.

He just.

It’s just too fucking much and Ryan never realized how hard it would be to do all of this totally alone.

“Danny, I’m so goddamn tired,” Ryan says out loud, near tears himself. “I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep taking care of you-”

“S’okay,” Danny slurs back to him. “Go back t’bed. I can make breakfast. I need to do chores… s’time, he can’t see I’m late, he can’t, can’t see-” Danny starts trying to push himself back to his feet, and Ryan is half-impressed, half-horrified when his desperately ill brother manages to make himself stand back up, knees locked, glittering, distant eyes fixed on the sink. Ryan stands with him, slowly, his hands out but uncertain what to do next. “Do dishes. Start with dishes. He has to see I’m still working…”

Danny takes a step and simply collapses forward, but this time Ryan is there to catch him under the arms in an awkward half-hug, and Danny shudders at the touch but he’s too weak to pull away or fight back, too weak to even try.

“Look in the woods,” Danny mutters, and his forehead falls against Ryan’s shoulder, thumping into it hard enough to make Ryan wince. “Look in th’ woods for us. Sssshhhhh… everything’s so fuckin’ loud…”

“You’re the only one talking here, buddy,” Ryan murmurs, closing his own eyes just for a second, feeling himself sway a little, a sort of dip in his brain where the white fog of tired takes over before his eyes jolt back open. “Shit. I, I have to sleep, Dan, or I’m gonna die.”

“Don’ die,” Danny mutters, without moving even an inch. “Don’ die. Mom’ll be mad at me.”

Ryan laughs, and after a second Danny huffs a sound that might be laughter, too, and finally Ryan braces himself, pushing Danny back up to where he’s taking at least a little of his own weight. “Okay, okay. I got an idea. Go back to my room, okay? We’ll lie down in there.”

“I have to start chores,” Danny protests faintly, his eyes dancing around aimlessly again, then landing back on Ryan’s face. “Can you tell Mom to call me in sick today? There’s no way I’m going to school. Abraham’s gonna be so mad at me... I can’t go t’school today...”

“You’re twenty-six years old, big brother,” Ryan grunts as he manages to get Danny’s arm around his shoulder to hold him up, taking his weight, his head pounding. He just had to get to bed. Just that far, not too far at all. “You haven’t been in school for a long time.”

“Oh.” Danny frowns, confused, and when Ryan starts trying to walk, he drags his feet along beside him, nearly shuffling. Their progress down the hallway is slow, but damn it, it still counts as progress, and Ryan can see his bedroom door getting closer with every step. “Did I graduate? I don’t remember that.”

Ryan sighs, taking a pause to redistribute Danny’s weight. He’s going to fall over right here in the hallway, pass out and sleep for a week. Right there on the floor. Maybe someone will drop an omelet or something for him to eat while he’s down there.

Who would make it, though, if Danny and Vandrum are both totally useless? Maybe if he called his mother, she’d send Mrs. Verona over with, like, a fucking honeyed ham or something.

“No, Dan, you didn’t. You were still one semester out. They sent you an honorary degree, though, I have it stashed somewhere.”

You know, when they thought you were dead, when everyone but me gave up.

“Honor degree.” Danny giggles, the sound eerie and unfamiliar, a high-pitched noise he’s almost never made in Ryan’s entire memory. “Degree for honor. What’s honor when you fuck like I do now?”

“If there is a God, may you never say anything like that ever again.” Ryan manages to get his door open, although only barely, and he stumbles a few feet into the room before simply letting Danny fall right into the bed, breathing hard.

“May I have permission to sleep?” Danny mumbles, eyes already closing as he mostly crawls his way further into the bed. Ryan’s heard him ask Nate Vandrum that question every fucking night since they brought him home, with the occasional lapse when he remembers he’s a human being and grown-ass humans don’t have to ask permission to fall asleep.

Just like they shouldn’t have to ask permission to shower or bathe or sit in a chair and not on the floor or eat with a fork or…

No. Too tired to be angry right now.

“Yes,” Ryan says heavily. “Yes, you can sleep.”

“Thank you for letting me sleep, Ryan.” The voice is soft and fuzzy, gentle and grateful, and Ryan fucking hates Danny’s stupid fucking rules and his stupid fucking puppy voice. And he hates that he’s so tired that he can’t stop himself from being angry that Danny still uses it rather than focusing on the fact that sometimes, for whole days, he doesn’t.

“No problem, buddy. Get some rest.”

He watches Danny curl up, turning his six-foot-two body into something shockingly small. His knees go to his chest and his arms curve over his head with his hands loosely splayed over his hair, a defensive position to ward off the blows that might be coming at any time.

He never slept like that before, he’d said to Vandrum one night early on, when they’d both woken up and caught Danny curled up like that on the floor next to the couch.

Yeah, w-w-well, your p-parents didn’t w-w-wake him up with head t-trauma, did they? Nate had said, and Ryan had hated him a little less, in the moment, when he’d seen the guilt written across his face. Nate was always guilty, and he damn well should be, but Ryan had plenty to be guilty about, too.

Plenty to make up for.

And he’ll be right back to that as soon as he gets some goddamn sleep.

Ryan sighs, swaying a little, and finally climbs in, sliding under the covers, unruly black curls falling over his face. He watches Danny, already out, curled up and ready to be kicked awake at any moment.

He falls asleep with one hand out, resting on top of the comforter within inches of Danny, not quite touching him.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

What would Danny do if a kid out in public somewhere started asking loudly about his scars? Alternatively, what would he do if a parent started being loud and rude about them?

CW: References to past trauma, current PTSD, referenced dehumanization

“Papa, look.” Danny knows the tone of the whisper, in a small high-pitched voice, and feels his shoulders tense, waiting for the end of the sentence, the words he knows are coming. “Look at his face.”

“Sssshhh, sweetie, that’s not very nice,” The man’s voice shushes the little boy, and Danny carefully turns so his back is to them, so he won’t have to look them in the eye. He can feel the lines of the muzzle in a sudden burn, a line of fire wrapped around his face. Under the fire is the fucking shame.

How could you let that happen to your face? His mother’s voice in the back of his mind, whenever he sees the people whose eyes widen, whose gaze can’t help but get stuck somewhere around his nose, his jaw, the ridges of rough skin around his neck. 

He hears it everywhere he goes.

what happened to him what’s wrong with his face what do you think makes scars like that hey isn’t that the michaelson kid what’s his name daniel maybe michaelson logging right yeah remember it was all over the news do you think he has scars like that other places too like under his shirt sshhhh honey that’s rude who cares he can’t hear us

But he can always, always fucking hear them.

“But I want to ask him-”

“No, sweetheart. Come on, let’s go over to the next aisle.”

They’re gone, but the fire in his face - and in his mind, and twisting around burning to ash all the parts of himself he is trying to piece back together... that doesn’t leave, when they do. Their voices burrow, and bury, and keep burning. By the time he’s done getting the groceries, he will hear it a few more times, some variation on the store, the whispered words. Maybe someone’s cell phone will come out for a photo they think he doesn’t know they are taking.

He was in the news, for what happened to him, and so they think they own him, too, some part of his recovery. That he belongs to them, to their stares.

Danny takes a package of wild rice down from off the shelf, tasting ashes in his mouth, the remains of a man who used to shop for food totally unnoticed.

In its place is a puppy, that’s all. Abraham’s dog, stuck in the shape of a man, pretending at being human while they all. fucking. stare.

He never says a word.

He finishes his grocery shopping in silence, accepts their stares as what he deserves, and when Nate or Ryan asks him why he’s so quiet later, all he says is, “Just thinking a lot today.”

It’s not the fault of the little boy and his grandpa that people stare at Daniel Michaelson.

It’s his own fault.

His responsibility.

It’s what he let happen to his face.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

If it's still open, could I request Stitches for your bthb card? Was there ever a time in the cabin that Nate had to give Danny (or Red) stitches?

Added! I have referenced Nate giving Danny stitches the first time in this piece, but I have an idea for another, too! Still set during captivity, but different circumstances.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I feel obliged to ask for "take me instead" with the twins. Because I'm a bad person

Damn, people.

Added!

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Bad Things Happen Bingo for Daniel Michaelson and his immensely poor luck, updated to show what's been requested so far!

Yes, I amused myself immensely with the bloodstain sticker that denotes requests. Yes, I am even more amused by what I'm going to use to mark the ones that are done.

Yes, that one's worse.

No, I feel no personal shame or guilt about this, but I must keep it a secret or lose my job on security grounds.

(name that movie reference and I will write a Danny bit entirely based on a prompt you give me. Which I'd do anyway. But this time we'll call it a prize)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Owowowo I've been binging Danny Michaelson on the sly today (on the sly I say as I furiously reblog) SO may I submit for the great Ash's consideration Broadcast/Recorded Torture for Danny on your bingo card? --@wildfaewhump

Hell yes you can! Added!

Current updated card:

[ashintheairlikesnow]

there was a part of daniel michaelson's story-- specifically "dressed up in your new collar" according to the masterlist-- that was spurred on by a prompt. do you know how to find the prompt list? it wasn't BTHB i don't think cuz it was a number

Here you go, Anon! Prompt list located!

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I want to write one of my longform WIPs so badly but my brain is such a buzz of panic that, like, nothing that takes more than ten minutes is even making it through. Ugh. 

I want to write teh BTHB Broadcast/Recorded Torture for Daniel Michaelson’s Story so badly, you have no idea. But the words, they do not come.

All I hear is a low-grade white noise demanding I refresh my bank account nine times before 2 pm.